WIP: Grey Knight Librarian

To follow on the heels of the Dr. Ew's Archon, I've got some shots of my favorite HQ unit from the Grey Knights codex. I love the flexibility of the Librarians (in all marine codex's) and I especially love the synergy he provides to a Grey Knights force.

So without further ado...

I loved the pose of the classic Terminator Librarian from GW but I preferred the style of the Grey Knight Terminators so I tried to mimic the pose that was so interesting to me.

(image property of Games Workshop)

Since he's just a composite of Grey Knight parts I wanted to add a little classic Librarian iconography to make look the part a bit more. I followed a tutorial Ron posted on From The Warp a while back and after a few trial runs on the side of an old Leman Russ I had a pretty successful result.

I also tried to add some gold touches to the Stormbolter to make it look like his wargear is a little more embellished than the rest of his battle brothers.

You can see his book of Secrets he keeps on fanny pack, and the skull of a daemon that he's attached to his shoulder since he's a show-off.

Finally, here are a few shots of the current progress on his force weapons. So far I've only begun work on the halberd since that's how I normally run him on the table, but I have a warding stave that's in progress too. I put a small magnet in his wrist on the arm as well as in each of these to weapon hands. The piece of brass rod prevents the hands from falling off if he gets bumped in the course of moving him around the table top.

(Sorry some of these are so blurry, I used my phone)

I've got some more details to finish up on him but I'm really happy with how he's coming along. Now just the small task of painting 20 more terminators and 40 more marines and I'll be close to done.

Iron Hands Terminator Librarian

Just a few work in progress photos of my terminator librarian (with storm shield).  He accompanies my shooty terminator squad and Lysander and acts as their ride using Gate of Infinity.

As you can see he's the first terminator that I've done hard line highlighting on, and I like it.  It will probably cause me to revisit all my older terminators to make them match.  I'll probably go ahead and base him so I can call him done.

The weapon is from the Grey Knights, and the storm shield is from Space Wolves

Strike Squads are GO! (...ish)

In preparation for upcoming events I'm trying to get the majority of my infantry squared away. Among those tasks one of the largest was the force weapon treatments for the Strike Squads. I have 15 of these guys in my 2000 point list, and 20 in some of my smaller point value lists so I really just want to get them done so I have a pool of finished marines to draw on for whatever point level I decide to play.

I had originally intended on doing a yellow to red color scheme for the force weapons but I was a little worried about not being 100% pleased with the results so I went the safe route and tried to rip off the GW colors.

I started with a trick I learned in a painting masterclass taught by miniature painter Mathieu Fontaine. I took a small sheet of kitchen plastic wrap and pushed the blade of the sword through and wrapped the mini in the remainder and secured it with masking tape. This is by far the easiest way to keep any part of the model from getting hit by overspray from the airbrush. It also means you can wrap the model up without fear of damaging any already complete paint work with tape or blue tack.


I painted the blades white with the airbrush, then taped off one edge of the blade as well as it's inverse on the opposite facing of the blade. Then I airbrushed GW Enchanted Blue from the hilt of the sword up 2/3 of the length of the blade. After that I airbrushed black from the hilt up to about 1/3 of the length of the blade. After that it's the same process except you mask the unpainted edges of the blade and paint from the tip of the sword down towards the hilt. As a side note I have issues with the Tamiya masking tape taking off some of my airbrush paint so I tend to do lots of redundant clear coats, almost always with Testors Dullcote, so I don't risk pulling my paint job up once I try to remove the masking tape.



Here's how the look before they were unwrapped. I was a little bit nervous that I'd have missed a spot during the masking process and they'd have some bitchin' blue graffiti on their armor, but they were fully protected during the whole process.

Here are the final results...



I'm pretty pleased with how they came out, I do think I went a little too heavy with the black but I may bring back some of the blue with a brush as I finish them up.

The whole process is a little time consuming but I think the finished product is worth it, especially if you only have a handfull of power weapons in your army and you really want them to stand out. For me, I liked the way GW's team painted the force weapons from the beginning so it was a pretty easy choice for me. Now I'm looking forward to getting into some the details on these guys and really getting them table top ready.