Ferro Beasts
A speed painted addition to the Alien Flora & Fauna project today, with these Reaper Bones Oxidation Beasts standing in for Rogue Trader Ferro Beasts.
According to Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader:
The Ferro-beast is about 2 metres long, quadrupedal and armadillo-like with a tough knobbly shell. Its mouth is surrounded by short tentacles covered in suckers, these secrete acidic juices and allow the creature to turn metal ores into digestible ‘soup’.
As they feed on metals, I assumed that the Ferro Beasts corrode or oxidise the material in some fashion while metabolising it and therefore I decided to paint them like a rusty vehicle part. Excluding drying time and clean up the three of these were painted in about half an hour, which isnt bad for silly, “extra” type models.
The original toys that inspired the rust monster. Image from Satisfactory Comics.
According to the Rust Monster Wikipedia entry:
“A rust monster is a fictional creature from the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game that seeks out and consumes metal, often the armor and weaponry of players’ characters. Originally inspired by a cheap plastic toy, the rust monster was one of the first monsters specifically created for D&D, and has been included in every edition of D&D, although various aspects of the creature have changed from edition to edition. Although in most editions, the rust monster has been a non-lethal creature with little or no way of physically harming players’ characters, it is the rust monster’s ability to destroy a character’s cherished and expensive weapons and armor in mere seconds that makes it a particularly fearsome opponent.”
Modern Rust Monster
As mentioned in earlier posts about similar sorts of RT bestiary entries, the Ferro Beast was an obvious way for Rick Priestley and co to use their existing 1980s, D&D heavy miniatures collections in their RT games. If using a Rust Monster as a Ferro Beast was good enough for the Rogue Trader developers, then using an Oxidation Beast to represent a Rust Monster to represent a Ferro Beast is good enough for me.
Ferro Beast as depicted in Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
The D&D Rust Monster has apparently varied in design a lot over the various iterations of the game (I wouldnt know. I dont really know anything about D&D of any flavour), so the version that I have painted isnt a perfect match for the Ferro Beast as depicted in Rogue Trader. Like the Enslaver/Beholder, I assume that the artists drawing the illustrations for RT were instructed to vary the final drawing a little from the original inspiration. But a Rust Monster is a Rust Monster (or Oxidation Beast or Ferro Beast) as far as I am concerned.
A robot takes its (poorly chosen) pet to the vet in Futurama.
I just realised that I spent more time getting this blog post ready than I did actually painting those miniatures. Thats a record.
“Giant bug-tortoises that eat power armour? Suuure buddy, keep taking the anti-coagulants.”
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2013, 40K, 40K Skirmish, Alien Flora & Fauna, Bones, Reaper Miniatures, Rogue Trader, Sci-fi |
sho3box 
I guess Ferro Beasts is the new big thing in Rogue Trader death world faunas these days 😀 I just ordered myself 2 Rust Monsters from Black Tree the other day, hahaha… Great stuff!!!
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Haha, lovely ones there! I have used the old toy you linked in that pic, it makes more than a decent mini for its purposes, but I really like the ones you have there!
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😀 The entire Adeptus Mechanicus deathworld explorator team is here. Ferro Beasts are just so hot right now.
I actually had this post written the other day before I saw your Ferro Beast Suber. I had only just found out that the Rust Monster was originally a cheap plastic toy when I saw your painted one on LAF. When I traded for the Bones Oxidation Beasts above I didnt even know what a Rust Monster was, I just thought that they looked like decent, cheap big alien things.
It will most likely be some Deathworld flora for me next, but I have some other stuff to finish first (orks mainly).
Thanks for the feedback guys 🙂
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Damn! You know I never made the ferro-beast/rust monster connection before? Then again, I was a teenager when I got RT, and the obscure entry at the back of the book wasn’t one that stood out. Having said that, I’ve got a couple (?) of those Reaper Oxy Beasts, and now it looks like I’ll have to speed paint them myself to theoretically use in narrative games of 40k…
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Do it, you know it makes sense 🙂
I was never very heavily into fantasy stuff (just science fantasy stuff) and I missed the D&D thing entirely. I therefore missed many of those references in the RT book. I am spotting a few that I missed as part of my Flora and Fauna project revisit.
I used the following to get quick results: black undercoat, gunmetal dry brush, splodgey application of Typhus Corrosion, drybrush Ryza Rust, Mithril silver chips/dings, paint eyes, varnish, base, finished.
Thanks for the feedback 🙂
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Hm, using the new technical paints.. I just picked them up a couple of weeks ago but haven’t thought of anything to use them on (well, I haven’t been painting either until 2 days ago.) Nice idea.
I might try and knock them over when I finish the Dust Zombie speedpaint project I just started. 6 boxes of Blutkreuz Korps Untertoten Squad – 30 Axis Zombies. Hoping to finish them by tomorrow. Just heads, faces, boots and gloves to finish now.
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Yeah, I am enjoying using the Typhus Corrosion and Ryza Rust paints in particular. Agrellan Earth is cute, but doesnt suit my current pretty generic basing style. I will certainly find a use for it though. I have yet to use the blood, the oxide and the snot.
I used Typhus corrosion as a very quick form of weathering on the feet of the Ripper Suits that I painted just before Xmas and I wanted used the Ferro Beasts to try out the additional rust effect, which is decent enough for little effort. Ryza Rust is also a useful paint to have simply because it enables a vivid orange drybrush technique, something that I had not found a satisfactory way to do before now.
So, Ferro Beasts are definitely a fun, low risk test bed for two of those new paints.
Im looking forward to seeing thirty speed painted zombies. I have painted many zombies, but over such an extended period that my techniques and results have varied wildly. Im definitely interested in seeing what you can churn out in just a few days (and then copy it).
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I suspect that the DUST zombies may be a disappointment to you, as they’re quite “clean” (in terms of blood, gore etc), and all wear the same jumpsuits. The only visible flesh is their heads. Since they’re pretty uniform and seem almost more mummified than decaying, I’m not too sure about the usual bloodstains from victims/their own decay, blood spatter or even trying out the new Nurgle’s Rot..
Anyway, 30 sets of just teeth and eyes to go on them now. I’ll get started now for a bit, I think. Might even get them finished tonight. Or tomorrow.
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I try to experiment when painting in an effort to find quicker ways of achieving comparable results. My zombies have been something of a test bed for that part of the process, which means that my satisfaction level regarding the paint job on an individual zombie may not be that high. If I were to start a zombie project from scratch in the morning they would probably look quite different to how they look now, so your Dust guys might be right up my street 🙂
While I have overdone the blood on a lot of my zombies they tend to more than acceptable on the tabletop. The gore doesnt photograph terribly well, but despite the rather adolescent drowned-in-blood look, it works on the table. By and large the zombies that feature in movies tend to be very bloody these days, although less so back in the original Dawn of the Dead era.
Anyway, interpretation of zombies is a surprisingly personal thing: most people have some idea of how they think the pseudo-science works and the corresponding effects of the cadavers appearance and durability 🙂
IIRC the Dust zombies are more of a consumable product than a result of an experiment gone awry. A mummified, somewhat sanitised version makes sense to me, like the mummies in Fido.
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Absolutely my point of view as well on the DUST Zombies in terms of them being product rather than feral. I’ve got another 80 each of the Nazi Zombies and Modern Zombies in plastic from Studio Miniatures’ plastic range that I need to get around to painting at some stage. I assembled the moderns a year or so ago, but the Germans are still on sprue.
Anyway, more zombies are still on the eventual cards, but not for awhile since I’ve got Fantasy and 40k stuff higher on the ladder for the time being. And also some Gorillas 😉
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Every gamer worth their salt has apes of some sort awaiting attention 🙂
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The movie ….or the planet?
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