"From the Skies They Come" - Arkanaut Company (Building)

Descending swiftly via a Frigate's grav-ladders

or suspension ropes, an Arkanaut Company

can deploy rapidly into the fray.

Games Workshop

Welcome to The Art of Caesura!

I hope you are all well! I've just return from a concert at the Galway International Arts Fest (Caribou) - a great time was had by all!

Those eagle-eyed amongst you may recall the sneak peak we had at New Years of things to come on the blog this year...At this stage we've seen The World of Smog: Rise of Moloch, and even a small appearance from Zombicide: Green Horde; But that leaves one noticeable exclusion...Kharadron Overlords!

While, until now, they have yet to make their appearance on the blog, I have been far from idle with them. I have been plotting and planning away, and while there is little physical evidence to show you thus far, lets just say I have big things planned...

But first, let's ground ourselves from these lofty heights with the foot soldiers (more of a militia, really) of the Overlords: the Arkanaut Company!

I LOVE these models. As you know, I've been painting a lot of pre-assembled minis recently (World of Smog, Zombicide) so it was really refreshing to build some dudes!! One of my favorite aspects of the hobby is building the models especially when you have loads of options like these guys here. The kit makes 10 guys and comes with with 13 heads, 20 left arms (10 cutlass arms, 10 hatchet arms), 3 special weapons, and 2 load-outs for the captain - heaps of choice! Also, many modern GW kits (which are hugely cinematic) are largely mono-pose, they can only really be built one way, so it was a joy to have so much freedom with these guys. 

I built the captain first because he required the least number of decisions. Oh, and I should say straight off, I built these guys to look cool, not to min/max gameyness, hence one of each special weapon etc. 

One thing to note when you're building your own, is that many of the arms have different degrees of abduction at the shoulder and flexion at the elbow which isn't immediately obvious until you try dry-fitting the pieces. What I'm saying is, some of the arms will work better in a pose where he's holding his arm out straight, while others will work better for holding his weapon across his body. 

As you can see above, I kept the special weapons in sub-assemblies, because they hold them across their bodies, it'll be easier to paint them separately. 

The last thing I'll show you is just an easy and effective way to drill out their gun barrels (I have a separate post on drilling and pinning here).

I started by stabbing a hole in the center of the barrel with a sharp hobby tool. 

I would really recommend doing this, because it is easier to center than just using the pin vice, and it will stop the drill bit from jumping. You can just use the thumbtack. Sorry for some of the blurry photos (it was tricky holding this while taking the picture).

With the small indent made, it takes no time at all to drill down a few millimetres. 

Once the barrel is partially drilled out, I just placed the tip of the hobby knife in the hole and spun it around a couple times to widen the outer part of the hole. 

And there we have them! I really enjoyed building these ten. It seems that armies of Overlords require thirty of these guys, so we'll see how much I like them after that!

Happy to have got a start on these guys, buckle-up because you'll be seeing more Kharadron Overlords on this blog in the future!

Listening: Santana "Put Your Lights On"

Gaming: Total War: Warhammer (Bretonia)

Watching: Absentia

Next Week:

Colours of the sky-fleet...