Haemoxyte Conversion: A new unit for Haemonculus Covens

Welp. The new Dark Eldar/Drukhari codex finally dropped. I picked it up at release, and didn't expect too much new, assuming it would be a simple update for 9th edition. 

But then it hit me with a surprise! A new unit type for my other hobby love, Haemonculus Covens. 

This new unit, the Haemoxytes, are meant to represent elite Wracks, and they were the perfect excuse to dust off my drukhari and convert up a model to represent it.

Enter the dream combination of Delaque gangers from Necromunda, with Kaoric Acolytes from AoS, with a little Idoneth Namarti Reavers/Thralls.

The History of Mr. Pink and Modern Synthesist (Podcast Interview with Chapter Approved)

Something a little different today. I was approached about doing an interview by Tibbs, of Tibbs Forge fame, and more recently of his new podcast Chapter Approved. Tibbs is a GW hobby enthusiast after my own heart: he cares more about cool conversions and story than he does about uber-competitive gaming. And its this more laid back, more art-based hobby focus that he delivers in the Chapter Approved podcast.

Anyway. He thought that our interests aligned, so the two of us recorded a skype call, which turned into a bit of a marathon and will be broken up into a few podcast episodes. Over the course of it, we went through my history in the hobby, some of my work on Tyranids, a lot of my work on Dark Eldar and the Haemonculus Coven, and then onto what is probably best described as my ideological stance on the hobby and the importance of being true to what you enjoy.

This first part of the interview concerns how I got into the Warhammer 40k/Games Workshop hobby, and talks a lot about my work with Dark Eldar and the Haemonculus Coven. Tibbs put together a standard, audio podcast, so I painstakingly went through and annotated it with relevant images in the following video.

Have a listen/look and let us know what you think :)

Haemonculus Coven - Timelapse of Display Board Construction

While working on the display board for my Haemonculus Coven for Armies on Parade 2016, I decided to set up my camera to make a timelapse recording of the sculpting and some of the painting.

Unfortunately, I'd already built the actual board when I had this idea, and I stopped the timelapse at the point where I pretty much messed up the painting on the flesh bits and had to redo a lot of it.

So, though this is incomplete, I hope that people find it interesting. I've sped it up a bit as it's a bit boring to watch someone sculpt spinal columns for several minutes!

Enjoy, and let me know if you'd like to see more videos!

Haemonculus Coven Display Board for Armies on Parade (Flesh Friday)

So, as is usually the case, I realized on about September 14th that Games Workshop's in-store Armies On Parade event was happening in a month. This, really, should be the one event that is marked on my calendar and I work towards all year. I don't actually play that much 40k, and mostly do all this conversion and painting work as a means of seeing a concept through to actual models. If I inspire some folks along the way, or encourage them to try to do more with their models, we'll that's great.

But Armies on Parade is pretty much the best possible place to showcase the kind of work I do. 

However, I always realize it's coming up late in the game, and don't have enough ready in time, and blah blah blah.

This year is different.

Haemonculus Venom Coven Conversion (Flesh Friday)

So, in case you're new around these parts, or I haven't talked about it enough, my main goal for my Haemonculus Coven of the Unmarred force is to create a converted, Haemonculus version of every non-haemonculus unit in the Dark Eldar Codex.

A long, long time ago, in a country far, far away, I came up with a concept for a Haemonculus Raider:

It's mostly a Raider with some gribly bits attached, and a Talos as its engine, and I'd played with the idea of having some spidery arms growing out of the middle of it for carrying its passengers. However, it never really worked for me, so I left the spidery arms off.

I've since given more thought to the Haemonculus Raider concept, and the idea of having passengers suspended from it on some kind of meat hooks, and when I make my revised concept for it, it's going to look a lot like this Coven Venom

Dark Eldar Grotesques Aberration Painted! (Flesh Friday)

Well, this feels pretty good.

Though I may not have succeeded with as much of my November Modeling Vow as I did with October, but I still feel like I accomplished some good things in November, chief among them, for me, is having finished painting AND BASING the unit of Dark Eldar Grotesques that I finished modeling in October.

That last basing bit is key. Anyone who has known me for a while can attest to the fact that I'm far more interested in modeling and sculpting than I am in painting and basing. Though I said I finished a lot of things in October, NONE of them were based. I fixed that his month, forcing myself to get over how boring I find basing, and have now nearly finished basing all the models I painted in October.

The full idea and process behind my bases is something I'll go into in a separate, fuller article. For now, the general concept was that I wanted them to represent the floor of a Haemonculus' workshop: a slick, bloody mess, some of which looked like it might actually be alive.

For painting the Grotesques and Aberration, I took the colour scheme for The Hexed from the Haemonculus Covens book...

Converted Dark Eldar Wracks complete (Flesh Friday)

 Well, I've officially polished off the first part of my November modeling vow by completing the conversions and sculpting on my first unit of Wracks since the Bob's Big Bad Coven commission.

This time I opted to use arms that were much more to scale with the models (last time I used mostly big, beefy, and LONG bloodletter arms), and I'm much happier with the effect. I also used mostly actual wracks arms (though sometimes converted) along with actual wrack masks to mask the fact that I'm using flagellant lower bodies and bloodletter upper bodies to sub in for the actual wrack models. I also sculpted on some combat cumberbuns to merge the two pieces/tie them back to the actual wracks.

Why go to so much work, employing bits across to many different stock models?

October Modeling Vow Complete (Flesh Friday)

Though it's the case that I didn't finish this modeling vow IN October, it is the case that I MADE the vow on something like October 16th, so I'll call that a victory.

On that day, I vowed to my Dark Kin on The Dark City forum that, come end of October, I would have finished:

- Building and converting my first squad of Grotesques
- Painting a 10-man squad of Kabalite Hunters
- Painting 1 Haemonculus
- Painting 5 Mandrake Cronos Parasites
- Painting 1 Cronos Parasite Engine
- Painting 3 Reavers

Here are the results:

Converted Dark Eldar Grotesques & Aberration (Flesh Friday)

What feels like a thousand years ago, I converted the guys below as part of a commission to create a haemonculus coven for a client.

...And they had some cool little details...

...and they took me FOR. EVER.

When I decided it was about time I do my next batch of Grotesques, I wanted to get them done quick and get them painted so I could see how my test scheme would work on them. I made them part of my October Modeling vow of stuff I would get done by the end of the month to keep me motivated.

It worked pretty well:

Coven Reaver Jetbike Conversion (Flesh Friday)

In my ongoing quest to convert haemonculus coven versions of every dark eldar unit in the codex, I've been rolling around the question of reavers for a long time. Well, I always knew that I wanted to convert them to look something like miniature Talos, but I wasn't sure how I was going to pull it off.

Until one day a couple of weeks back when I was just messing around with a Hellion skyboard and a reaver jetbike canopy. I placed the skyboard on top of the canopy, and—BY GOD—it just...fit. As in the two model components pretty much slid together like they were meant to be that way.

Haemonculus from Cephalyx Overlords conversion (Flesh Friday)

As soon as I saw these guys, I thought they'd make perfect Haemonculi.

In the fluff I've created for the Coven of the Unmarred, one of my main juxtapositions/weird and hideous bits of creative reasoning is that the Coven is obsessed with perfection. Well, at least the Coven's master Haemonculi/Coven Archon are. It's a kind of pyramid scheme, I guess, wherein the Dark Eldar at the highest level of Coven get to be pretty (or "unmarred") because of all the hideous experiments that have been attempted on the twisted creatures beneath them.

Cronos Parasite Engine Conversion Complete! (Flesh Friday)

I posted my thoughts on the Cronos Parasite Engine model a while back. The summary was that, though I love everything about the Talos/Cronos kit and all Our Man Jes did with it, when I hear the description of the Cronos as a soul-sucking parasite, I picture something far worse than the be-tentacled-but-faceless existing Cronos plastic model.

I picture an insatiable, avaristic horror: a gaping, needle sharp maw stretched wide as it hungers for souls. I picture this:

A twisted, dangerous, grasping thing. A soul vaccuum. A monster from under your bed. An utter nightmare from your darkest dreamings.

So I built it, and I'm pretty damn happy with the results. Here's a rough, 360 tour:

Coven Mandrake Conversion (Flesh Friday)

Remember this guy?

He was my attempt at my first coven-ified mandrake, based on the idea that if there was a soul-sucking Cronos Parasite Engine, there must—therefore—be Cronos parasites somewhere who were bred up to Engine size/capability. I figured what better place for these soul-sucking parasites to live than in the slot reserved for mandrakes.

Anyway, he now has a whole posse to terrorize the neighbours with:

Including a spooky Night Haunter that is emerging from the shadow of an Eldar Guardian:

Silent Hill Amnion Talos Conversion

*AHEM* - Mr_Pink

This post could also be called "Kiss of the Spider Lady", or "Kiss of the Pregnant Spider Lady", as she's become known to my friends. Also, this is kind of like Flesh Friday, except I haven't done that in a while, so I figured it's worth posting early ^_^

Also: WARNING - NIPPLES!

I took on a commission earlier this year for another member of the Dark City forum. At the time I was presented with the following sketch of the Amnion boss from the Silent Hill Homecoming video game as inspiration for a Talos, and I thought "I could scratchbuild that..."


Famous last words.

Raid Spoils: Coven Clawed Fiend and Urghul

I'm a member over on the All-Dark-Eldar message board, the Dark City, and every christmas they run a Christmas Raid. It's kind of like Secret Santa for the Dark Kin: each participant pledges to give a model-related gift of $20 value or more, and each participant makes a request for something they'd like in their army.

When I drew my "victim" for the raid, he had requested Clawed Fiends or Coven stuff, so I thought this was the perfect excuse to complete my proof of concept model for a feral Grotesque to represent a Clawed Fiend in an all-coven force. As I detailed in my previous post, I used a Vargheist/Crypt Horror as a basis for it, added in some Talos bits and a Nagash spine, some Greenstuff, and—BOOM—Grotesque Fiend:

Grotesque Genus: Options for Converting Dark Eldar Grotesques

EDIT: I updated this article on 12/28/2016 with a new options and some more pics, and I'll try to continue to keep it updated as it's one of the most popular posts here.

Anyone familiar with the Dark Eldar scene knows that there is one big, burning question from anyone with eyes, limited funds, and even a passing sense of aesthetic rigour.

What am I going to use to convert Grotesques?

"But," I hear you saw, "GW already HAS a model for Grotesques."

Yes, that is true, but the thing is expensive, statically-posed, lacking on additional bits, and, well, UTTERLY GROTESQUE!

I that way I guess it's perfect for representing the unit that it is meant to, but I certainly cannot respectfully field that "Breakdancing Bigfoot"(TM someone brilliant who isn't me) in my army—particularly when I put so much work into converting so many of my models.

Coven Wyches Conversions - Nurses

I take this whole making a coven version of every unit in the codex thing seriously.

What's more, I'm not a fan of just slapping a tentacle or a atrophied talos arm on something and calling it a coven unit. For that reason, I still think I could have done better with the following unit of wyches. However, I'm not a huge fan of Wyches, particularly now that they've been depowered, so I figured I should just get this unit done with and move on.

Figuring Out Paint Schemes

When trying to decide on a paint scheme for my coven force, I knew that I wanted one that would be pretty light, almost white, because I wanted there to be lots of contrast when I elected to splash them up with some blood.

I wasn't really sure how I was going to do it until I cracked open the Haemonculus Covens books and spotted the following:

It was the colour scheme for the Hex, and it was PERFECT.

Coven Mandrakes

Well, with it being Halloween and all, I thought I'd share something particularly horrific from my work on my coven: Mandrakes!

Once I'd found a suitably horrific solution for the Cronos, I had the itch to replicate this hideous treatment for Cronos parasites in other places in my army. I see the Cronos as kind of vacuums/generator for the whole coven. They are black holes into which souls/spirits pour, and they store the energy for the coven. I wanted them to have a pretty central role in the coven, so, if one gets destroyed, there needs to be a fresh supply of replacements.

Enter the idea of including nascent parasites, which are being groomed and grown to one day assume their roles as full-fledged engines. When looking for a role that I could rep with a baby Cronos, the Mandrake was the most obvious ones for me, particularly now that they seem to be stealth DEATH machines with the new 'dex.

It Will Not Die (The Return of Flesh Friday)