Improving Basing

How it looked before

So last post, I showed the painted Thanatar Siege Automata, and talked about how I wasn't happy with the base and letting it tell the story that I wanted.

I decided that adding a discarded shoulder pad of the Sons of Horus would help tie the theme in, I decided to change this to Death Guard, keeping it more relevant for 40K if I'm able to use Mechanicum forces in that game at some point, and I think it would mix in with the corruption and rust a bit better.

Pad in place and weatherd to match. 

Layering up bone to white, then sponging and stipping rust on to the pad gave it the look I wanted, a few washes of Vallejo Smoke dirtied it up a bit and picking out the edging in a dirty bronze.

This was then glued next to the beam and stippled with the weathing powders used on the base to tie it together.

Something is still missing from this though, looks bare. 

Despite this addition, it was still missing something, so it was back to the drawing board/ the Facebook discussion group for more ideas, I had thought of adding more discarded Astartes parts, weapons etc. but I didn't think it would help to be honest.

My friend Pete suggested grass. We chatted and I've tried it and I think it looks good,

 The idea was again, to represent the spreading corruption of the Heresy and the Chaos Gods in general, the addition of the shoulder pad helps now, its as if even a discarded part armour of a tainted soul is enough to desecrate the ground, but the loyal forces of the Emperor still stride on, impervious.


This has been a really fun project and its nice to have gotten a model and base totally finished, this is the first model I've managed to finish completely since moving house 6 months ago!

More dead grass would be
great to really sell it