They have come for me…

Guess who just arrived in the post?

As with all Artel Miniatures, the detail is so crisp on this, its almost a shame to paint him!

Ignore the plaster, I cut my thumb open when I was trimming off the remaining resin support struts. Needless to say getting covered in arterial spray from someone else probably would have made Talos grin.

Just waiting for the rest of First Claw to go up for sale.

When I started this project, I said the first thing any committed Night Lords fan had to do, was create their own First Claw from ADB’s Night Lords Trilogy.

And although I am more than happy with how most of my guys turned out, Artel W miniatures just dropped these WIP concept sketches and a render.

My word I want these!

If these turn out even looking half as good (and based upon the quality of Artel’s sculpts and casts) these will be amazing!

and now the Render for Mercutian.

These are going to be so good!

and now we have concept art for Cyrion! Note the Slannesh symbol on this shoulder paldron and on his bolter.

Quality.

Just got Xarl and Uzas to go!

Consider this guy ordered!

Link incase anyone else wants a Talos Night Lord!

https://artelw.com/Leader-of-the-Dread-Squad-p283336625

As is customary with Artel, you get a few different bits, mainly head options so you can have him with the skull faced helm, or 3 alternative bald heads.

I will go bald I suspect just to make him stand out a bit.

If you do order artel state that it can take up to 12 weeks for minis to arrive, and if you are in England I would expect longer delays in a post Brexit world.

Absolute madness how good this guy looks, he doesn’t have his “skin cape” in the concept art, but I think we can all live with that!

Uzas!

So, I have undercoated all of the Terminators in Chaos Black and the Dreadnought.

Splash of Kantor Blue and a wash of Drachenhof Nightshade and we are left with this.

For the Havocs and Raptors which I have had sitting around for an age now, these were already undercoated in Corax White.

I have also thrown on some Kantor & Nightshade.

I was holding off awaiting delivery of some funky Helmets and Shoulder Pads for some of these, but it looks like that order has gone massively array (when last I checked the courier service had attempted delivery – in New York USA- in live in the UK) so I have given up on those and just used some Night Lords helmets and random chaos marine shoulder pads.

The difference in lighting doesn’t help, but I think having all of these painted up and displayed together is going to look a treat.

Also got 5 of these guys.

I was aiming to give the leader one of the fancy helmets I bought (see earlier post) but those haven’t arrived and seem to be stuck at a distribution centre.

I will give it until the end of this month, then I will just have to use the left over shoulder pads and heads to finish these off and my Raptor who is also headless.

Got myself a Contemptor Dreadnought off Ebay.

The arms proved just as expensive from Forgeworld!

Managed to glued this guy together, so I am just going to have to undercoat and paint it.

It’s a huge miniature.

While I have been working on painting up far too many Blood Bowl Teams, I have also managed to get this 95% complete.

All that remains to do (and is largely the case for all of my Night Lords at the moment) is to add some lightning bolts.

The colour scheme as always mirrors that of Konrad Curze from my Primarch project.

I opted to give the Skull helmet no eyes to convey the fact that it’s not a real skull but mainly a helmet.

I really like the way this turned out, and I was attempting to get another one of these off Ebay and a Leviathan dreadnought but sadly the bidding went mad! So that project is on hold for bit!

A host Raptorial.

I like all of the poses on these with the expectation of one – so I choose that one to have the helmet less head.

The leader or the squad currently doesn’t have a head as I am awaiting these arriving:

I have also bought a squad of Havocs who I will also furnish their leader with one of these Helmets, the rest will probably get the Night Lord themed helmets I purchased.

From here, I will pick up the Contekar Terminators – (would I have preferred the Atramentar, probably, but we will settle for these fellas).

So, we had a huge issue with the specialist helmets and pads – they got sent to the USA by mistake!

These have now eventually arrived and I bought some of the 40K Raptors to use with these.

Some finally finished Night Lords.

Next some Raptors….

Talos, Uzas, and Xarl.

May need to add some Blood for the Blood God to Uzas’ weapons.

Uzas also famously paints the hand print of one of his victims, but I don’t feel like I can pull that off.

I have bought the Horus Hersey Night Lords transfer packs, and some of those feature a tiny bloody hand, so we will see!

I have already included pictures of these two on my Primarch Project.

But I have uploaded them here for the sake of completeness.

Konrad Curze Primach of the VIII

First Captain Sevatar

Once I have finished a few more of these and based them up, I will do my best to get some better pictures!

A constant source of frustration of mine on these project blogs.

Now Uzas in the Night Lords trilogy has thrown his lot in with Khorne, and is essentially a Khorne berserker – much to the annoyance of his First Claw squad mates.

He is known for wielding a chain axe and for wearing a Mark III armour.

So for this guy back to Kromlech we went to pick up a Chainaxe, they do a nice set including a huge two handed Chainaxe. I intially gave Uzas that and had him holding it in one hand, but to be fair it looked a bit to big.

I also used the champion arm with power sword that comes in the Night Lords upgrade pack.

And trusty eBay provided us with the Mark III Helmet.

The other thing to note with Uzas is his red hands once again noting that he had committed some indiscretion which would ultimately lead to his death.

Not all of the 10 Marines I bought can be named characters, some will just be your standard Traitor Marines.

However I was able to repurpose the bare head I got with My Dread Lord to give to a “normal” Marine.

Talos’ “best friend” and wielder of a fearsome Chainblade. Xarl also was best known for donning the Night Lord Ceremonial Winged Helmet as “there is nothing wrong with having a bit pride in your legion”.

So with that in mind I repurposed the Helmeted head from my Sevatar model.

I also picked up some Chainglaives from Kromlech – an excellent source of upgrade parts.

Colour scheme the same as all of my Night Lords.

However Xarl features a lot of lightning bolts (I will get better pictures) and I did that following the Duncan Rhodes Warhammer TV method.

Lightning Bolts

Lothern Blue

White Scar

When I first starting buying the Primarchs, as much as I love the Konrad Curze mini, I did look around for something that could have shown him before his descent into madness.

A more regal Curze if you will, I then saw this fella over at Artel W Miniatures and bought him thinking he could stand in for Curze if I ever played either 40k or the Horus Hersey.

Alas he is too short, but he does now have a place within my Night Lord legion as an exhaulted Champion – or squad Leader.

I may dub him Zso Sahaal The Talonmaster due to his fearsome Claw!

The first thing I needed to do with this guy was to source his individual components.

Famously Talos stole a power sword from a Blood Angel and it was the source of much conflict as various Night Lords tried to steal it and The Blood Angels wanted to retrieve it!

So I was able to secure a very nice looking Blood Angel themed Power Sword from Ebay.

Next, Talos is gifted a Storm Bolter, so back to Ebay we went.

Also for whatever reason, Talos wears the Aquilla on his chest although he breaks it to show his distaste for the Imperium – another Ebay buy.

Finally I wanted a stylised helmet for him and I was able to pick up some from Kromlech.

The tricky part was cutting the Chaos Marine chest plate away and fitting the Aquilla one in place. A bit of liquid Green stuff filled in most of the unsightly gaps.

The armour we did:

Kantor Blue – (shade) Drakenhof Nightshade – *highlight* Kantor Blue – *highlight* (Altdorf Guard Blue) – *highlight* Hoeth Blue 

Metal Trim:

Gehanna’s gold – (shade) Agrax Earthshade – *highlight* Liberator Gold

Weapons

Leadbelcher – (shade) Agraxearth Shade – (shade) Nuln Oil – *highlight* Storm Host Silver 

Weapons

Retributor Armour – (shade) Agrax Earthshade – Blood For the Blood God on the Blood Drop

Skull

Corax White – (shade) nuln oilt – *highlight* White Scar

Once I had the basis of my Night Lord Marines, the next step that any Night Lord fan should undertake is making First Claw.

For anyone who has read ADB’s excellent Night Lords trilogy, you will know that First Claw are a rag tag group of Night Lords still fighting the long war while attempting to stave off the decent into Chaos that has befallen the other Traitor Legions.

Notable Characters are Talos “Soul Hunter” Valcoran who is gifted with Curze’s ability of foresight.

Uzas a Night Lord fallen under the influence of Khorne.

Xarl hands down the best figher in First Claw who wields a Chainglaive

Cyrion the most human of First Claw but secretly under the influence of Slannesh

Mercutian the heavy weapons guy who weilds a huge Heavy Bolter

Variel The Flayer an Apothecary who betrays the Red Corsairs to join First Claw.

So here is Variel.

I have brought the Apothecary upgrade pack from Kromlech to make him stand out. In the books he has the faces of some of his patients / victims on his Shoulder Pads, but I couldn’t really find anything for that. So I have given him two blank Chaos Pads and I intend to paint those up red and black to show his former legion.

So, the easiest thing to do when creating a Chaos Space Marine army would be to just a box of marines and get started.

Well nothing I do is easy! be it trying to paint and buy all of the Primarchs or buying loads of random Blood Bowl players from all over the world to make a Chaos All Star team, so sticking with a box of marines wasn’t going to cut it.

Plus I don’t want my Night Lords to be chaos they are traitors but haven’t quite fallen to Chaos. Curze after all was disgusted by what had happened to the Word Bearers so he wouldn’t have stood for any of that in his own legion!

So I had to do a few things, buy some Night Lord themed shoulder pads, and helmets, and cut off any kind of overly Chaos looking emblems or weapons.