Cauldron of Blood WIP and Greenstuffed-Guardsman Test.

Yay for experimentation!  Today I tried a non-harmful substance - Green Stuff, and the poor recipient of my attention was a single Imperial Guardsman that my brother had gained as a freebie from one of GW's 'Paint a Mini in Store and take it home with you free!' things they do to hook in naive youngsters.

Now, to be in this hobby you need to have some level of a creative streak in you, and of course that comes in all shapes and sizes and varying levels of skill and so forth.  Mine is specifically 2D-oriented, what I call doodling, what others may call drawing or artistry (but I tend to do it when I'm bored or supposed to do something else, so doodling seems more accurate).

Having exalted myself as some kind of Leonardo da Vinci reborn (more like Picasso or whichever caveman first began spreading his own feces on the wall of his cave in the shape of a bison), I now must upload said blueprint, otherwise there was no point in mentioning it...

Soz for low quality.

Looks like Magneto with a cold, now that I think of it...
Anyways, I probably came up with this as a some kind of a divergence from the old Guard style, which is "Take a Real Life army and put it ... IN SPAAAAAAACE!!!!!!!"   Now, I'm not saying that the classic GW IG style doesn't work, au contraire, I do enjoy the Imperial Guard's style and background very much.  The Vostroyans and Kriegsmen especially.  However, I did think that in an Universe as large and varied as 40K, there would be space for a planet whose culture had diverged slightly more than usual away from what had existed before.  So, enter the Abraxians.  No real reason why they look different, and there's no evidence to contradict the theory that their planet was simply left with libraries full of Cyberpunk comics and that they decorated their armour accordingly, so we must assume that's how it was.

The scarves/ heavy clothing are from the fact that Abraxia is a Storm World, constantly covered in gales, storms and hurricanes that are home to some of the largest mammals in the galaxy.  The hunting these monsters provides the planet with its main export, foodstuffs.  The heavy armour is to protect the Abraxians from flying pebbles and such that can strike with the force of slingstones when the squalls come again.

Anyway, here's my Guardsman:

 I should mention that this Guardsman was already assembled when I wangled him from my brother, and so I had to knife him a bit to apply green stuff completely.  Bits affected are the head, the forearms and the legs.  And I'm really not used to Green Stuff.  I wouldn't mind doing an actual Guard army like this at some point, so tell me what you think before I commit my savings into large orders of modelling putty.


Finally, some more Dark Elf goodness, I've been building a Cauldron of Blood from scratch since Easter or so, and I wanted to show it here.

I want it to look like it's made of white and black marble; black because of the obvious sinister reasons, and the white will be good as contrast to the splatterings of blood that will eventually decorate it.  For the crew I'm using the Witch Elves Command models, because the only way to get the official models is to buy the entire cauldron set, which defeats the point of scratch-building, aye?

And yes, it floats.  Since it can actually move along the battlefields in the game (preferably right behind an unit so as to give it lovely bonuses), making it a static object seems daft.  Now, I have seen a Cauldron which was mounted on a chariot drawn by Cold Ones, but I though it looked far too bulky and un-sleek.  Not elfy.  So, according to the Malus Darkblade novels, the temple of Khaine has its own magicks and tricks.  So, floating Khainite Cauldron ho!  Thinking of mounting some Empire flagellant heads on top of those white pillars if I'm honest, and have the blood dribble down the sides...

Anyways, tell me what you think!