A wild DREADNOUGHT appears!! Duel? Y/N

Here it is, fresh off the bench! Meet my Ironclad Dreadnought, Malatesta! I put a few more coats of yellow ink on him(thanks BigWill for pushing me not to give up on the Wil Davies method), and this is the result. I went whole hog and built the base all from scratch to match the base on my Mortis pattern Dread, I cut up pieces of plastic card, glued them together by their flat sides, then filed and drilled them to look rocky and craggy. I included some debris to aproximate a piece of vehicle armor, which you may not be able to see the Iron Warriors logo on, but the hazard stripes do a good job of intimating it's origin. The banner is my favorite part on this piece. I have always wanted to freehand a starfield onto a banner...and when the idea well ran dry, I figured to try my hand at it. I started with a chaos black, good and thick for consistent coverage, moved it to midnight blue, then enchanted blue. I ended the color at a lightened sky blue. The effect I wanted was the gloaming before the dawn, as the latin phrase on the right and left sides reads "Ut duliculo, sic nostromo justicia", or, "As dawn, so our justice". The motto means that, well, you pretty much have as much hope in stopping Malatesta from getting where he wants to be as stopping the impending dawn from breaking. The stars were accomplished by painting skull white in "+" signs and then rounding out the insides(does that make sense?). They still needed more, as all stars I think of ever seeing in pictures have a fuzziness to their shape, like a lack of defintion. I watered down a bit of skull white, maybe 10:1, and lightly applied it to the compass points of the stars. I then did some pointalism back ground stars for a bit of contrast. The three stars represent the three main branches of the traditions of the Sons Of Dorn; Imperial Fists, Black Templars, and the Crimson Fists.

Here on the right knee pad, I had a bit of a happy accident. I had given these pieces a simple green bath and while cleaning the knepad for this shin...I lost it and it fell down the drain. I was LIVID. I nearly scrapped the whole project, then and there. I dove into my bitz box for an answer. While sorting sort Empire WHFB bitz, I came across a sprue of unused shields, Lo and behold! a beautiful shield depicting a skull and a laurel! I based her black, threw on some red foundation and highlighted it, POW! instant kneepad replacemment. I call the decoration this modification represents "The Crimson Laurel". The story behind it is that any battle brother recieving, and surviving, grievous harm in the service to the Imperium is awarded this Laurel, representing his blood spilt for the greater realm of man.