Greetings!

As per my army list I put up many moons ago in the army list forum, I am finally starting my log for my 64th Genswick Rifles, strongly based off of Dave Taylor's own 33rd Genswick way back in some 290ish WD. Since I'm a slow modeller, I've tried to build a large percentage of the force already so that painting won't have to be put in it's own log if this one fizzles out. For those of you unfamiliar with Dave Taylor's stunning Genswick Rifles, they are similar in appearance to World War I soldiers, based off of Bretonnian men-at-arm bodies and heads with cadian arms:














Here is the paint scheme I'm going for:





The first time I saw this army, I was stunned at the atmosphere it generated, so gritty and dark, it was something altogether different from the cadian forces I'd seen so many times. It's taken a number of years, but I finally set this down as the army I wanted to build. I wanted something slightly different to lead the army, and decided to create a number of Adeptus Mechanicus units to tie into the army. I developed what I feel is an interesting narrative to go with the army, to further push the strange mix of feudal and high tech that so exemplifies 40k:

The expedition of Explorator Appius Serraxhon led the Tech Magos into the vast frontier regions of space, chasing folktales and whispers of ancient machines as his Mechanicus fleet sought out the lost technologies of Man. Over time, the fleet moved farther and farther into more wild and untapped systems, in the belief that collapsed colony worlds would provide the greatest chance for technological discovery. The Magos felt that, on these worlds, the machines that had laid the foundations of the colonies would still be intact, untouched by human hands over the millennia and overlooked over by marauding fleets uninterested in worlds with no populations to exploit. These silent worlds would be the basis of the Serraxhon’s research, and would bring no small amount of trouble to the Magos in his quest for knowledge.

The lost colony worlds were often not as silent as predicted, and forays into suspected findings often came at a high price from the worlds’ inhabitants, most of which were none too pleased with the expedition’s arrival. Aliens of all manner placed constant pressure on any research teams, resulting in most landings resembling planetary invasions rather than scientific endeavors. Even human settlements posed a threat to the research, as too often the disciples of the Machine God were viewed as aberrations or demons, attacked on sight with no chance for diplomacy. All of these forces placed a severe strain on the defenses of the fleet, until eventually all research efforts were halted, expeditions deemed unsafe without further support. Without the required defense forces, the Mago’s investments were left to wait in their ships, in fear of the precious tools also being destroyed by opposition.

Unperturbed and tenacious as any Magos Explorator, Serraxhon decided to acquire a new army to replace his exhausted Tech Guard. He returned to colonized space and began searching for any large Imperial forces moving through the region. Eventually a number of battleships arrived in a nearby system, resupplying before moving back into Warp Space. This gave the Mechanicus fleet enough time to catch up with the Imperial fleet, and as soon as the ships were in communication range, the Magos alerted the Imperial ships to imminent boarding by delegates of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Serraxhon himself personally led a delegation to the bridge of Imperial battleship The Praxis to lay for his mandate requisitioning the entire fleet to serve as a replacement Tech Guard for his expeditionary mission. Backed by hulking praetorian servitors, the tech lord’s show of force left the Praxis’ commander no ability to argue the validity of Serraxhon’s claim, and so he surrendered fleet control to Mechanicus forces.

Upon analysis of the newly acquired fleet, it appeared the ships were travelling to the Sabbat Worlds as part of an effort to push out the Chaos forces in the region. Assessing the conflict in the region resulted in only a minor chance of system liberation given the forces engaged, and so Serraxhon prepared a message to be sent after the ships entered Warp space indicating problems with the fleet’s Gellar Fields, with the knowledge that the fleet would simply be marked “Lost in the Warp” when it did not arrive at its expected location. With his fleet secure, the Magos took to examine his new forces. The ships carried battalions of Genswick Rifles, soldiers only equivalent to post-feudal technological levels. These guardsmen looked at the tech priests of the Adpetus Mechanicus with a fear not all dissimilar from the lost humans the expedition had encountered on previous worlds, speechless at observing men made more of machine than flesh. While this first appeared disastrous, Serraxhon decided that these soldiers would serve a purpose in providing his expeditions with a more comely face to human colonizes they would inevitably encounter in the future, serving to lessen the losses the defensive forces would face in the coming journeys. The Magos welcomed the bewildered guardsmen into his fleet with open arms, promising they would be serving the Omnissiah, their God Emperor, in more beneficial ways and that they would be gifted for their service. With the scraps recovered from the lost Tech Guard, the battalions were refitted with advanced technologies that would improve the capabilities of the guardsmen, making them a formidable opponent to anything that stood in the way of the Adeptus Mechanicus. With this, Magos Serraxhon moved the fleet deeper into the Segmentum Pacificus, in search of greater treasures further outside the rim.

Let me know what you think! This army will be approximately 1250 points worth of material; I'll have a number of tanks backed up by a lot of heavy weapons and some infantry to boot. Hopefully if everything goes well I'll have some actual pictures of my force up soon

Wow! I think you've got a really good concept here, and if you can match the quality of Dave's armies, it'll look awesome, and totally unique.

Good luck man.

Very interesting idea, I like the mix of AdMech and Guardsmen and the fluff blends them together quite well. I'd go with the lighter uniform myself, it's different from most IG color schemes, but will still fit the look of the minis very well. Some dark red highlights like you want to do would contrast this very well, IMHO. Can't wait to see where this goes!

i have some cool WHFB bret / empire bodies that I will be putting up for trade soon - could be used for you're commanders etc.

pm me if interested.

I would love to see what you manage to do with this. A great theme.

Thanks for all the feedback guys! I'm happy that everyone seems intrigued by the concept behind the army.

@ ironKing: Thanks for the offer man, I've actually got everything I need to build this army (which means the log will move at the pace I build things, so I better get movin!)

Here's a couple of close-up pictures of my Leman Russ Executioner:











This tank is only a very minor conversion, as I was pretty happy with the FW Alpha Pattern Leman Russ. It's basically the addition of a converted plasma cannon and some sand bags and some minor details. The FW model is a really attractive tank; it took a love of nerve to cut the battle cannon off of the turret, but don't worry, you'll see it in another model

On a side note, how are the pictures? I'm trying to decide if they're too large/close/etc. and am working on getting my camera skills up for the rest of the army.

the idea is awsome, and I think you are going to be spot on for the modelling. Also btw the pics look fine, just maybe a little more light.

Okay, next tank up! This time it's the Chimera. I know these pictures are still a little dark, but I'll fix that with everything after this (took the Chimera and Leman Russ pictures at the same time).











This tank has a bit more conversion work. I'm going to have sandbags on all of the tanks to create some unity of appearance, since each tank looks different. Personally, I'm quite fond of the open-top look, it reminds me of the landing crafts from D-Day. I do have a mat piece that I can put over the back of the tank, so it's "covered" with a netting, but I'm not sure if I like that as compare to having nothing else on top. I'll try to post a picture of the tank with the netting later on so I can get some advice. Thanks for the feedback so far!

Just as an FYI, there's a cheaper way to get appropriate heads for an army like this than trying to appropriate Bretonnian Men-at-Arms heads (which are typically ridiculously expensive from bitz-sellers because they know lots of people want to do this). Check out my thread here for a review of some good WWI-esque heads (http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/227882.page#528568). The best ones for a Genswick-type project are sold by a company named West Wind Productions (www.westwindproductions.co.uk). They're based in Britain, yes, but purchasing and shipping to the U.S. are quick and easy. I've ordered a bunch of heads from them - in fact, I have too many, PM me if you're interested in buying some!

@ Death By Monkeys: thanks for linking me those heads, those Brit heads with gasmasks look really nice. As of right now I have all the parts I need to finish the entire army, my troops haven't been shown yet because they're not completely finished, and I *may* be ignoring them a bit for finishing up my tanks, but they'll be up soon.

Alright, up next is my "artillery" tank. To be honest, I think it's fairly ambiguous as to which type of artillery it fits, which I actually don't mind. I'm trying to decide if I'd like to run it as a basilisk, medusa, or colossus. I might just have to play some games to get a feel for which option I prefer.










Let me know what you guys think! I really appreciate any feedback.

Also, I tried to brighten up the pictures but I don't think I quite did it. I'll keep adjusting that for future posts.

That Basilisk is pretty damned special

Alright, Tank Update with a relatively large amount of material:

I have completed all of the tanks I will have in my 1250 point army. The last one is the Hydra:








All-in-all, I'm very satisfied with how the tanks turned out. The pictures helped me pinpoint some dirty spots on the tanks that needed to be cleaned up (mold lines, etc.), and I have since cleaned and primed all of them.








I put the canopy on the Chimera, but I'm not positive whether I like the tank with or without it. What do you guys think?








Well, now that I've completed the tanks I'm beginning working on the heavy weapon teams. I'm going to have 3 mortars, 2 autocannons, and a lascannon (2 teams worth of models). That'll be most of the heavy firepower for the army, so from then on it'll be grunts and command squads, where most of my Mechanicus stuff is more prevalent. The Mechanicus element of the army is more "hinted-at" rather than going so far as to robotisize the whole army, so hopefully this won't discourage any interest in the log. Here's an overlook at what my army is going to have:

Head Quarters

- Magos Lord (Counts as Daemonhunter Inquisitor Lord): 104
> Inquisitor with BP & CCW, 2 Mystics, Servitor with Plasma Cannon

- Command Platoon: 110
> Commander with Power Sword, Master of Ordnance (30), Sniper Rifle, Regimental Standard

Elites

- Tech Assassin (Eversor pattern): 95

Troops

- Infantry Platoon: 320
> Command Squad, Power Fist, 4 Flamers
> Infantry Squad, Grenade Launcher
> Infantry Squad, Grenade Launcher
> Heavy Weapon Squad with 3 Mortars
> Heavy Weapon Squad with 2 Autocannons & Lascannon

- Veteran Squad: 175
> 10-man Squad, 2 Meltaguns, Demolitions
> Chimera with Multi-laser and Heavy Flamer

Heavy Support

- Leman Russ: 230
> Executioner, Plasma Cannon Sponsons

- Colossus: 140

- Hydra: 75

Total: 1149


The army is sort of dictated by the box I have, which has just enough room to fit all of the tanks, troops, and heavy weapon teams, so most adjustments that I can make to the list are more about unit arrangement rather than adding altogether new units. Also, I'm currently counting the artillery tank as a Colossus, but if everyone thinks that it's a basilisk, then I might have a hard time forking it as something else to my opponents...in which case it'll become a basilisk!

Hopefully I can keep the pace high and should be posting troops in not too long, because I know the painted figures are what people really want to see more than gray plastic .

As always any sort of feedback is appreciated. If anyone would like to know how I built anything on the tanks, I'd be more than happy to explain anything.

These are some great conversions, I especially like your basilisk. The sandbags piled up add a great deal of character and its shaping up to be as good as Dave's army. Nice work, can't wait to see some of these tanks painted!

-CC

Edit: Forgot to add, I prefer the Chimera with the top left off.

Sick i gota say

Nice stuff there brother but one question...where did you get the helmets from?

r3n3g8b0y wrote:Nice stuff there brother but one question...where did you get the helmets from?

Bret Men At Arms

DUDE that basilisk is fething AWSOME!!!!!!!!!!

No surprise here, but I think they look great!

The tanks are looking really good, although drop the canopy from the Chimera. It definitely looks better without it.

I second Empchild, your artillery piece is AWESOME!!!!!!!
it is certainly a combination of unusual parts that work incredibly well together to create a truly unique piece for the battlefields of the 40K universe.

Keep up the great work!

Cheers
Dave

I'd keep the top on the Chimera. Remove any ambiguity on the table if it's open topped or not.

Also, to complete the look I'd recommend looking at WWII tanks in Europe. Sand bags were common, as was barbed wire, extra armor plates hastily added, mesh barriers to stop HEAT rounds, and even building forms and pouring concrete to add more armor. Something that might look good would be to put barbed wire on the left and right sides of the troop compartment top to prevent people from boarding it.

great work.

Man, I was gone all of today and suddenly I got a whole lot of responses! I feel like I'm already falling behind with the log!

WOW! A response from Dave Taylor himself! That is quite exciting to me, considering I've followed a good number of your armies back in those White Dwarves (Dwarfs? hmm), and the Genswick and Adeptus Mechanicus forces were definitely some of the most inspirational work I found that made me decide that coming up with some really unique twists on the standard models was the way to go. I saw the scratch-built Gorgon you added to the army in your blog, and I'm curious how much the Genswick have expanded since they showed up in that WD.

I'm glad everyone likes that Basilisk/artillery tank! It is probably one of my more unique units and came about from some mistakes from building another model rather than actual planning. I built about 80% of a standard hellhound, decided I wasn't going to field a hellhound and instead add an artillery, gutted the fuel tanks and rear, and found myself with a pretty messed up-looking tank. I knew I wanted to turn it into an artillery but had no idea how to do it, other than having the cannon from the FW Leman Russ. After I picked up the Aegis Defense line set (to build my Hydra), I realized how good the autocannon foundation pieces would look with a cannon sticking out as a large mortar, and eventually (and with a LOT of tinkering), I came up with the monstrosity you see now.

It seems there is a tendency towards the Chimera without the roof, and I'm wondering if it's because the roof looks stupid (which I realize now that is does haha) or it would simply look better without any form of roof. I was looking at a picture of a wooden triangular roof on an old Mark IV tank:





Would this sort of roof improve the look of the chimera (wooden frame with mesh overlayed), or would the Chimera still look better without any roof?

Tyvr has some interesting ideas about tinkering with the tanks that I'm considering. I think, as far as era in concerned, that the Genswick are supposed to be more reminiscent of World War I rather than World War II (I think the troops show this much better than my tanks), and I'm wondering if that would affect the amount of material on the tanks themselves. Given, one restriction I have to hold to is the tanks cannot be much taller than the chasis (the turrets are all detachable, so when they are in the storage box they are turretless and surrounded with foam). But I am considering the addition of more sand bags or barbed wire. I'm afraid I would probably botch adding armor as my GS skills are lacking. The other thing that is on my mind is if the tanks will become too convoluted with excessive detail by adding a lot more bags and wire.

Please let me know what you guys think! All the advice and support has really helped a ton so far. I'm going to try to finish up some heavy weapon teams tomorrow and if the weather permits I'll have some photos to show in not too long!

i vote no roof, although i get the feeling that you conceived the chimera with a canopy of some kind and want to maintain that look... i think the hard roof makes it look too boxy. even the triangular configuration won't solve that. one thing you could try if you want too maintain the look without using more plasticard and GS would be to create the look of camo netting hung across the open area to obscure the cabin area from any body trying to peer in. i did a quick search in google and couldn't find an example of what i mean but i think you get the idea. instead of a hard roof, the troops would just hang the netting to prevent any sniper from being able easily pick off anybody within the open cabin, but of course troops inside would be able to see through the netting easily. just a thought, make your chimera a soft top instead of a hard top.
anyway i love your stuff, can't wait to see some of the troops!

I apologize for the delay in updating the log, I've been a bit busy with holiday things and haven't had a chance to finish a lot of models to put up pictures. But I can assure you, this log will not stop until I have a completed (i.e. painted) army of Genswick soldiers at my disposal.

@kukuchik: I have come to the conclusion to not have a roof on the chimera. The problem wasn't so much that I wanted a roof, but that I was worried about people complaining that the chimera should be open-topped as per WYSIWYG. That camo netting idea isn't half bad either, but the more I look at the tank, the more I remember that I built it with the intention of it looking like a landing craft, and I doubt anyone would give me that hard of a time about the tank, I mean, it's just a chimera haha.

Well, whilst perusing a local gaming store, I saw they had a 1750 pt tournament going on. A lot of the armies were pretty cool, and they didn't seem that much bigger than the 1250 pt force I have (but then again, I'm playing guard so that should be expected ) and now I'm contemplating the idea of adding 500 points to the army. Since this is my only ever planned army, I've pretty much coaxed myself into going ahead and finishing this force so that I can play a wider range of games, and I have decided to add a Hellhound (since I planned on this originally, I might as well go ahead and get it), a Valkyrie and storm trooper squad.

Upon reading this, I'm sure everyone is thinking "Genswick Valkyrie?"but that I have something different in mind. As per the fluff I came up with, I imagine my army being mostly Genswick soldiers with some Mechanicus elements running the show. Recently I thought that it would interesting to have more Mechanicus stuff in the army rather than just some servitors, tech priests, and bionics, so I came up with this: add an Adeptus Mechanicus valkyrie, which would be some sort of reseach vessel, and load it up with a tech priest and either skitarii or servitors!

So this is where my dilemma lies, what exactly do I make? Servitors or skitarii? I have three ideas I want to run past everyone, simply b/c I can't come to a decision myself:

Idea 1: Skitarii made from Death Korps Grenadiers
This is certainly not my own original concept; and I've seen pics of this floating around. I found this picture in another log (though I unfortunately could not find it again to credit the original creator, which I apologize for), and it would be close to what I'm envisioning





As previously stated, this is not my model, but it does capture the image I have in my head
Pros: very sinister in appearance, only requires modification of helmet into hood
Cons: expensive, possible scale difference between regular soldiers and Death Korps
Other: fairly uniform in appearance


Idea 2: Skitarii made from Vostroyans
This idea is pretty similar to the Death Korps idea; I would scuplt hoods on, modify the rifles, and generally tech-up the soldiers
Pros: Cheaper, on scale with Genswick, more similar in appearance
Cons: Metal, require more modification
Other: less uniform in appearance

Idea 3: Servitors
This idea is going in a bit of a different direction, but I don't think it's a bad one, and it's more fleshed-out than the previous ideas.





What I would do is get about 10 servitors, mount them on Men-at-arms legs to tie them in better to the Genswick, and equip each of them with a mounted hellgun and a mounted senesor arm, very similar to the previous picture of a work-in-progress servitor I have.
Pros: Cheap (since I only need about 4 more servitors if I take the servitors off the heavy weapon teams), more fluffy to image of a resourece-exhausted Tech Magos who is having to rig his servitors to fight
Cons: require the most modification, not as idenfifiable as storm troopers

Those tanks are awesome, great job. I especially like the Hydra and Chimera.

As for the Servitor/Skitarii choice... personally I like the Skitarii made from Death Corps, though they do look like they are teenagers in hoodies and halloween masks out to scare some old lady! It just needs a cap peaking out from inside the hood to complete the look

If you go the servitor route, I'd try and tie the legs and body together a little more as there's a slight size/bulk difference between them. I'd almost be tempted to just use the men at arms bodies, but have lots of wiring and bionics over the top to make it look like the Magos has taken the dying Genswick troops and re-purposed them. A guitar wire would do that much cheaper than buying 4 more servitors

Dude you are just getting better by the posts here. I love the mechanicus fellas, and definately the krieg grenadier converted. Good job im sending you a pm btw.

Wow! What a fantastic idea for an army! Gotta say I'm loving what you're doing here.

For the Chimera, have you considered adding some roll bars? Some bits of sprue would work fine, and make the model seem more complete, IMO.

There is so much brilliant stuff going on here- that Hydra conversion is the first I've seen to use the Aegis cannons without seeming a little insubstantial, and the executioner turret may be pinched when I get round to my Armoured Company idea...

I'd vote scary Skitarii guy- really sinister, and exactly the kind of men that would intimidate a guard commander. Failing that, have you considered using WHFB Ogres with dreadnought power fists as Heavy-Class servitors? Some guitar string and green stuff would easily tech them up, and the ripper guns could be incorporated in their arms, or underslung.

Thanks for the comments guys!

@ endtransmission: Haha, I definitely see what you mean about them looking like Haloween punks! I'll have to make sure if I do obtain some that I steer away from that look! Thanks for the advice about the servitors, I've been brainstorming the servitor idea right now on how to best do it

Everyone seems to like the Dkok Grenadiers idea, so I think I'm going to try to obtain some. With my idea to expand the army to 1750 points, I've been gung-ho on trying to obtain the new stuff while I'm still building the army...I like to have everything at once so I can mix and match more bits, even though it has put a big halt to my progress, which I need to fix...

As such, I put up some of my older stuff in the Swap shop, so if anyone is interested in picking up some random models, here is the link:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/269227.page

I apologize if posting that is bad thread etiquette, I didn't see anything indicating I shouldn't do it in the rules but I could be wrong. At the least, it gives you guys an idea of what I've been working on over the last week. I'll be updating the log with some actual Genswick stuff within the next couple days, and I think that once I get past this "army expansion" hump, things will start chugging along at a much, much faster rate

Your stuff is pretty incredible, I love the Chimera and I think my next one I get I might attempt at making one like yours. I also think the basilisk is really well done some with the hydra. But honestly I do think that you could do better with the Leaman Russ Executioner. It the gun is alright but I think having something like a Vanquisher turret with a camo net on it would go much better with the theme of your army, oh and definitely put a camo net on your Basilisk. Still your work is fantastic keep it up I want to see more pics this stuff really gets my mind spinning on conversion possibilities.

beautiful is all i can say....the tanks look awesome too good luck with the rest mate!

Will their be an homemade codex attached to this army?

Scrazza wrote:Will their be an homemade codex attached to this army?

Yeah that would really make your opponents Gawk at your army. Plus you don't even need a Warhammer themed cover for it. I would say your army would not be complete with out it.

it needs a lot of preparation though. Taking pictures for it (optional) requires proper background terrain and an artist who can make the artwork(or if you can do that yourself...) and of course hours of play-testing.

i think the grenedier idea looks the best. but if cost is an issue i would strongly recommend the voystoryans. great minis, and if you GS the silly bits (bear hats, moustaches etc etc) that you dont want (cos personally i love the moustach/monacle thing they have going on) you can have some cool looking minis. especially cos they have a variety of gasmask styles.

Alright, please, please, no public beatings over the tardiness of a significant update!

The good news is I have finally settled on my expansion concepts for the army. I decided I am going to build Genswick-hybrid servitors for my count-as storm troopers over skitarii, the reasons being price and availability of Dkok grenadiers as well as (what I feel) a greater unity of the entire army. I'm going to have regular grunt guardsmen, equipment-bedecked grenadiers (vets) with shotguns, explosives, and gasmasks, and the aforementioned servitor bodyguard unit, with the technical stuff being used on the command elements of the army. So, now that I've gotten past this "thinking hump" I should be speeding up assembly.

Thanks for the comments and advice guys! There seems to be a lot of interest in the creation of a home-brewed codex, but I'm not quite sure what this would entail to be honest. I had planned on simply using the Imperial Guard codex since it covers all of the units, but maybe I'm missing what everyone is getting at (this is quite possible! ) My currently-planned 1750 pt army looks like this:

Head Quarters

- Magos Explorator Serraxhon: 133
> Count-as Daemonhunter Inquisitor with Psycannon & CCW, 2 Mystics, Servitor with Plasma Cannon

- Command Platoon: 140
> Commander with Power Sword, Master of Ordnance (30), Sniper Rifle, Regimental Standard, Medical Servitor (Count-as Medpack)


Elites

- Tech Assassin (Count-as Eversor Assassin): 95

- Tech Priest with Servitor Maniple (Count-as Storm Troopers): 205
> 10-man Squad, two Plasma Guns


Troops

- Infantry Platoon: 315
> Command Squad, Power Fist, 3 Flamers
> Infantry Squad, Grenade Launcher
> Infantry Squad, Grenade Launcher
> Heavy Weapon Squad with 3 Mortars
> Heavy Weapon Squad with 2 Autocannons & Lascannon

- Veteran Squad: 185
> 10-man Squad, 3 Meltaguns, Demolitions
> Chimera with Multi-laser and Heavy Flamer


Fast Attack

- Hellhound with Multi-melta: 145
- Mechanicus-pattern Rapid-Deployment Flyer (Count-as Valkyrie): 100


Heavy Support

- Leman Russ: 230
> Executioner, Plasma Cannon Sponsons

- Colossus: 140

- Hydra: 75

Total: 1748


This is pretty much what I had for the largest incarnation of the army, but I'd definitely like to hear what everyone thinks (there may be small errors in the list; I'll probably change it slightly but all of the units are present.

I've been tinkering with the guardsmen, trying to get those two squads finished. Here's some early work on the first squad:














I'm pretty satisfied with the overall look the models. Obviously, they need cleaning and I'll be scuplting their arms on but I'd like to hear what you guys think before I get too far. I'm going to try to brighten up the pictures a bit as well as they still seem a little dark and detracting. I should have the second squad pictures up today, and in the meantime I'll be cleaning these guys and getting them finished as soon as possible.

DUDE I am loving the poses on these. first off when I saw the squad together I was immediately drawn to the squad leader as I love the chain mail infront of his face. I really love the gaurdsmen throwing the grenade. especially with his weapon on the ground at his feet.

Yeah the models look great.

Looking good! Don't forget to add a pommel on the sergeant's chainsword. Where did you get the chainmail covering the sergeant's face?

Cheers
Dave

davetaylor wrote:Looking good! Don't forget to add a pommel on the sergeant's chainsword. Where did you get the chainmail covering the sergeant's face?

Thanks for the comment about the chainsword, I was planning on adding a pommel and some wiring going to his backpack (which unfortunately can't be seen in the picture, but it's a FW Chaos Renegade backpack). The chainmail is from one of the VC Grave Guard heads; its the one with the chain mail hanging off the face (making it easy enough to remove)

Not only is the chainmail cool, it's WWI accurate.

Damn nice stuff mate! keep up the great work!!!

I love the guy with the Burp gun grendae launcher.

Owain wrote:Not only is the chainmail cool, it's WWI accurate.

You are very correct on that one good sir. German stormtroopers towards the end of the war predominately clad themselves in armor. Much similar to medival armor of old. Some of the first real camo patterns came out from their armor.

These are coming along really nicely. I hope you're gonna give that chap an arm.

Alright, second squad is up as far as early assembly goes, I'm working on GS'ing the first squad and perfecting them, and I'll put their pics up when they're finished.













I'll also put up some back shots when I update the first squad, since some models have a couple details worth showing. Still working on perfecting my camera settings as well...

I'm thinking I might steal your grenade launcher look for my Blood Pact stormtroopers, AP3 scatterguns anyone ; )

Cheers
Dave

davetaylor wrote:I'm thinking I might steal your grenade launcher look for my Blood Pact stormtroopers, AP3 scatterguns anyone ; )

Cheers
Dave

by jove I think the aussies got it.. I again consider idea swiped thank you.

loving the models so far at first i thought the arms looked a bit out of preportion, but they seem to be ok now love the machine guns your giving them ^^ squads really look the part

i like the crazy duel mace weilding fanatic aswell

Very nice! I will definitely bear this in mind if I ever get around to doing some IG.

Looking very very nice indeed! Only (tiny) nitpick I have is the mace wielding fanatic: personal preference is against two melee weapons in 40k.

Really really good though- keep us posted!

Some brilliant stuff here can't help but think that Skitarii would be more like normal troopers and make more sense as Stormtroopers than Servitors myself. However you'll certainly make cool lucking servitors and I guess the line would be pretty blurred between them anyway! I'd alos like to recommend this website Landships to you theirs some lovely period photographs and information there. http://www.landships.freeservers.com/ An exceptionally WW1 element to consider for your vehicles would be to have them carrying fascines on top of themselves somehow. Can't wait to see more especially the Admech stuff!

Empchild wrote:You are very correct on that one good sir. German stormtroopers towards the end of the war predominately clad themselves in armor. Much similar to medival armor of old. Some of the first real camo patterns came out from their armor.

Unless I'm mistaken, that particular example is a tanker's mask, work by German tank crew to protect themselves from small arms and shrapnel while looking out of the vision slits on A7V's.

Extremely well done soldiers, I am normally not a fan of the older looking guard armies, but theses are fantastic. I just have one question where did you get the revolver that one of your troops is holding?

smeezilla wrote:Extremely well done soldiers, I am normally not a fan of the older looking guard armies, but theses are fantastic. I just have one question where did you get the revolver that one of your troops is holding?

Just a guess, but looks to me like one of the metal revolvers from the old Necromunda weapons sprue.

Agamemnon2 wrote:

Empchild wrote:You are very correct on that one good sir. German stormtroopers towards the end of the war predominately clad themselves in armor. Much similar to medival armor of old. Some of the first real camo patterns came out from their armor.

Unless I'm mistaken, that particular example is a tanker's mask, work by German tank crew to protect themselves from small arms and shrapnel while looking out of the vision slits on A7V's.

I spoke with a WW1 expert the other day and you are not mistaken, nor am I. the stormtroopers apparently would cover their upper bodies almost entirely in chainmail so I guess some of them did form adaptations of that mask.

is anyone else slightly bummed by the servitor idea? i mean its origonal, and would fit in with your army, but i dunno the stormtrooper idea seemed so cool

guess ill have to knick that idea for myself then


Automatically Appended Next Post:
and also find out how to spell nick

god im really fail at spelling

awesome conversion work...

and chimera without the canopy IMO...
looks alot more rugged that way

fething sweet ass army, bro! I love it!

Get some stuff painted!




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and I second that the Chimera looks better without the canopy.

Thanks for all of the comments guys! I'm shocked to have as much response as I've had, I keep assuming the blog will fall back into the previous couple pages while I stall on updating and every time I check it seems like there's a new comment! Some freak weather has been going on over here; it snowed (I'm sure all of the east coasters are in the same situation!), and I've had a number of tests and work keeping me distracted, but these updates are pushing me to get off my arse and work!!

First and foremost, I'd like to give a HUGE shoutout to fellow Dakkaite Empchild, who so graciously donated to me some fresh dead tissue-- I mean, servitors!



By the way, I'm not sure if you didn't mean to send that arm (which I believe is a FW Elysian arm). Let me know if you need it back!

Thanks a ton man! I've already begun a thorough examination of the miniatures, trying to figure out how to best utilize them. I only hope I can recreate them at a skill level that will make you proud.

davetaylor wrote:I'm thinking I might steal your grenade launcher look for my Blood Pact stormtroopers, AP3 scatterguns anyone ; )
Cheers
Dave

Dave, I'm definitely looking forward to what craziness spawns from that conversion. Let me know when you get around to doing it!

smeezilla wrote:Extremely well done soldiers, I am normally not a fan of the older looking guard armies, but theses are fantastic. I just have one question where did you get the revolver that one of your troops is holding?

I believe that pistol came from one of the old Necromunda weapon sets as Death by Monkey said. Well, either that or the new redemptionists box set, I'm not entirely sure unfortunately

Llamahead wrote:Some brilliant stuff here can't help but think that Skitarii would be more like normal troopers and make more sense as Stormtroopers than Servitors myself. However you'll certainly make cool lucking servitors and I guess the line would be pretty blurred between them anyway! I'd alos like to recommend this website Landships to you theirs some lovely period photographs and information there. http://www.landships.freeservers.com/ An exceptionally WW1 element to consider for your vehicles would be to have them carrying fascines on top of themselves somehow. Can't wait to see more especially the Admech stuff!

Llamahead, thanks a ton for that website! I've been perusing it and there is a wealth of photos there, definitely inspirational stuff! I wish I had seen it earlier so it could have influenced my army more! Haha

Yeah, there seems to be a consensus of a bit of disappointment over scratching the Skitarii idea, and I think that might be in part because I didn't quite show what I was getting at, and so I will try to fix that now. I've got some pics of my wip veterans/combat engineers:


















On a side note, I changed the settings on my camera and took some back shots as well, so please let me know if these are improvements


These guys obviously need a lot of work as too, I'm going to give them more bags, grenades, equipment, etc. to really push the combat engineer appearance. I wouldn't recommend the FW Renegade head conversion, as it's quite expensive, and was not the original purpose for them when I first purchased them. These guys will be mounted in the chimera in the earlier pics.

So....onto my thoughts about the servitors. I'm going to have the regular guardsmen, this 10-man combat engineer squad, and then *stormtroopers*. I'm really undecided on what I should do with them. I can certainly see what everyone is getting at about servitors not fitting the bill for stormtroopers, so maybe Skitarii would be the more logical route. I suppose when I decided earlier I was thinking strongly about consistency:



I know that servitor is still really really WIP, he definitely needs buffing as people have stated previously, he's just for visualization purposes

This gives me a progression of 3 different troop styles for my army which will be either 1500 or 1750 points (haven't really set that down yet, my current assets are about 1300 points). So I want to know what you guys think:

Would this plan of regular grunts, geared combat engineers, and heavily equipped servitors create a good look? The other idea I have is to turn the servitor squad into regular guardsmen, and have the Dkok Grenadiers (if I can find them somewhere! I might have to get them from FW, argh) as the storm troopers for the army, which would give me perhaps a bit less unity but its impossible to deny the coolness of the idea.

Well, I hope this update is enough to satiate interest of a day or so . I'm sorry to say that I will probably drag my feet on painting until I get everything assembled. I don't have much of a work space to build and paint, and that (coupled with a perfectionist nature) is making me want to get everything built and done, and then massive painting wil begin.

I meant to send you the arm figured you could find some good use for it. The problem is you have pushed me to now want to do one of these Reg'ts so it is on my list for this next year. Enjoy the bits and glad to help. Cannot wait to see how it all turns out.

What are, and where did you get, those canisters on the meltagunners?

One of the coolest projects I have seen in a while. Consider the idea stolen :p (feudal militia counting as penal legionaries)

CadianXV wrote:What are, and where did you get, those canisters on the meltagunners?

They are from the FW Chaos Renegade models. I had to take them off the backs of their torsos (so definitely not recommending repeating this unless you're like me and are great at destroying expensive pieces )

For the Skitarii how about Foot Knights have a look at the Perry Brothers Billmen I reckon they'd make a good base for some higher status models for this army anyway and theirr a ton cheaper than GW £15 for 40 models or £18 for 20 hmmm

good stuff there.

Very original and looks great with the gas masks!



DC

Ahhh your killing me I must have an update!!!!

EPICBURGER!

Damn! My plans of letting the blog fade into obscurity while I make up for lost time during the holiday is foiled! Sorry folks, between starting two new jobs and the holidays I haven't gotten a ton of work done. I have, however, been doing a lot of thinking and I'll share that (with the work I've gotten done) to keep this thing off of life support. I'll go ahead and put up the terrain I've been working on. I apologize about the poor lighting in advance; I wanted to get pics up today and didn't get to it until it had already started getting dark, so I lost some of my background lighting...also, I noticed that the buildings are bit dusty from sitting up in my closet, so I purchased a large contained to keep them in from now on to get rid of that problem, but I think it make the buildings look grainier than they are. I'll have these, and those elevated trench walls from the Aegis defense line kit, to make up the total of my terrain:






























I believe I've finally come up with the solution to my servitor/skitarii debacle-- I'm going to do both!, although the ideas have changed a bit. I decided that the current storm trooper rules aren't my favorite, and I feel that my original plan of skitarii teleporting into battle, though very cool, was a bit at odds with the rest of the army. As such, my skitarii are going to count as veterans, who will ride in a teched-up chimera, which I feel will help keep consistency. I'm constructing the chimera right now, I'll just say I borrowed heavily from endtransmission's Junos Moles chimera idea. As for servitors, I think I will relegate them to manning the heavy weapon teams , something that I've seen in old rogue trader art. Since I don't need skitarii with the prowess of storm troopers, I decided to steal ANOTHER idea from Dave Taylor, this time from his Adeptus Mechanicus army (I'm talking about the squad at the top of the page):





I think these more ragged skitarii would gel well with the army too; they look like they were taken right out of the Genswick and initiated into the Machine Cult. So far, the only thing I have for that squad is this tech priest:











This guy is one of my favorite models to be honest, and I hope the pictures show him well enough. I'm planning on having him either lead the skitarii squad, or count as the Inquisitor Lord.


Here's how my ENTIRE army is going to look when it's finished:

1850 Pt List (Currently 1845)

Head Quarters

- Tech Priest Retinue: 125
> Count-as Inqusitor Lord with Bolter, CCW, Psychic Hood
> 2 Mystics, Servitor with Plasma Cannon

- Command Platoon: 190
>Magos Serraxhon (Count-as Straken), Standard, Medical Servitor (Count as guardsman with medi-pack)


Elites

- Tech Assassin (Count-as Eversor assassin): 95

- Ratlings: 50

Troops

- Infantry Platoon: 320
> Command Squad, Power Fist, 4 Flamers
> Infantry Squad, Grenade Launcher
> Infantry Squad, Grenade Launcher
> Heavy Weapon Squad with 3 Mortars
> Heavy Weapon Squad with 2 Autocannons, Lascannon

- Veteran Squad: 185
> 3 Meltaguns, Demolitions
> Chimera with Multi-laser and Heavy Bolter

- Skitarii Squad (Count Veteran Squad: 155
> (Count as Veteran Squad with 2 Plasma Guns
> Chimera with Multi-laser and Heavy Bolter

Fast Attack

- Hellhound with Multi-melta: 145

- Robot (Count-as Armored Sentinel with Plasma Cannon): 75


- Rough Riders: 75
> 5-man Squad, 2 Meltaguns

Heavy Support

- Leman Russ: 230
> Executioner with Plasma Cannon Sponsons

- Basilisk: 125

- Hydra: 75

Now, you guys might have noticed a ROBOT in the fast attack. I stumbed across this picture the other day, and felt I needed to have this in my army:





It has a nice 1950's vibe to it, and I imagine Magos Serraxhon might have one of these in his personal collection, to have survived the tribulations of past expeditions and serve a potent symbol to strike fear into the enemies of the Machine God. I've done some prototype work on it, but it's only in very early stages of development. I still have a number of other things to work on, including a hellhound, Genswickifying some ratlings, make Dave Taylor-esque Rough Riders (by the time I finish this blog, his attorney's going to be after me for idea infringment! ), so I hope I can pump out some good stuff soon. I'd like to get the army built by the end of the month.

More to come, I hope everyone had a happy holiday and good new year!

Accolade wrote:

Forgive my ignorance, but you could you explain what this area is? Its a cool piece of terrain (Im liking the oil coming out of the barrels), I'm just wondering what its supposed to be?

Oh, and thanks for the update!

No trouble whatsoever CadianXV, I'll explain the method behind the madness.

Originally, I had built this piece with the idea of it being a small landing bay inside of a hive city, for small flyers to land and drop off supplies through the city. There's already a bunch of supplies sitting on top of the small landing spot, and there's a machine that takes the supplies and puts them on the conveyor belt, that leads into the darkness (i.e., probably it just goes down a level to storage or something)

This piece admittedly is the only thing I have that has non-GW parts in it; my rational was needing parts that I could not get from GW and the fact that terrain has no bearings on my ability to play in a tournament. I hope that explains it for the most part, it's mostly 40k parts, mixed with a few pieces from a Pegasus construction set, all set on top of a foam board cut to size.

Okay, I really love how your terrain has more purpose and story to it than "church that got bombed". The conveyor belt/landing pad setup is really, really cool. The fallen door is also neat. Great work, keep 'er comin'!

grEat terrain! i love the statue, and the floorboards really stand out!
nicely done.

I can't believe I never noticed your blog before. Some of this stuff is utterly fantastic, and gives me great ideas of my own. Please don't let this lapse into obscurity! It's awesomeness far surpasses such a mundane fate!

This stuff is awsome keep it up!

Truly eye popping!

I love Genswick armies. Keep up the good work!

I like the mechanicus guy a lot, but have to say I think the conveyor belt on the terrain is an awsome use of tank treds.

Well, I've gotten a bit work done over the last couple days. It's been hard to get a lot of progress done trying to balance two jobs, but I really want to accomplish my goal of seeing this army on the table. With this last bit of work, I'm considering whether I should leave the army at 1500 points or buy the materials I need to finish the last couple units. I still need to construct 5 rough riders, a AM chimera, and a squad of Skitarii, plus all of the other tweaking and conversion work needed to finish up other units, and the task seems monumental, plus I don't know if I want that much stuff! (I'm a bit of a minimalist)

I think this last bit of work will help me determine if I want to sit at 1500 or 1850. As usual all of the work is fairly prototype and needs bit addition, part swapping, cleaning, etc. Here's some pictures of my command squad:











and here is Mago Serraxhon himself!











He's an older pewter model, so he shows up kind of funny in the pictures, but I like having him since he's such a unique model.

As with the machine element of the army, I've begun construction on some of these elements to see how well they gel with the Genswick units. Here is my tech assassin (counts at an Eversor assassin).











I'm sorry if the photos are a bit poor on him. I couldn't get an angle that really showed the entire model since it's in such a dynamic position, and at any farther distance he starts to just look tiny in the photos, and I'm not sure if that is because he is too busy-looking or what.

Here's some early prototype work on my robot, the count-as armored sentinel. He looks similar to the art I showed in my last post, but I feel he is a bit more 40k-ified compared to art.














That's all I have for now. I'd definitely like some advice on how these models are coming along since they serve as centerpieces for the army. I'm a bit weary of how the mix of high-tech AM stuff mixed with WWI-era soldiers is looking (i.e. the assassin seems like he's part of another army), so I'd be very grateful to hear any comments about that. I'm hoping that I can create a look of ancient, but high-tech machines (the robot I think fits this bill) that tie into the army.

But anyway, enough of my rambling, I want to hear your thoughts! Thanks for all of the advice so far guys, I think it's definitely helped shape the army in its progression so far.

(On a side-note, I realize my pictures have gotten a bit dark again and I think that's probably due to my bulbs going bad. I'll go ahead and replace those before the new pics)

wOw! i think you want 1850, for the simple reason i don't want you to stop.
your work is truely inspiring!

Nice! very very characterful!

Very nice, and rather unique army. Keep up the good work!

Accolade wrote:I'm a bit weary of how the mix of high-tech AM stuff mixed with WWI-era soldiers is looking (i.e. the assassin seems like he's part of another army), so I'd be very grateful to hear any comments about that. I'm hoping that I can create a look of ancient, but high-tech machines (the robot I think fits this bill) that tie into the army.

Consistent basing will help you a great deal- if you go for a WWI themed base (i.e. mud and razorwire) then incorporate this on your AdMech guys as well, it'll tie the army together nicely. Splatters on the robes could look effective.

In painting terms, go for steampunk-esque schemes; brass and dirty metal is your friend here. Basecoat of Tin Bitz, followed by a 1:1 mix of Tin Bitz and Brazen Brass. Extreme highlight with Brazen Brass and then give it a Devlan Mud/Black wash.
Silver bits will also look good with a green/brown/black mix to show grease- use it sparingly on pistons.

Hope that helps, and really well done on the army so far!

Love that sentinal honestly. I have to admit this is turning out to be extremely inventive and very unique, so well done to you good sir!

How did you build that robot?

Malika2 wrote:How did you build that robot?

Okay, Robot breakdown:

Head

- Torso joint of a dreadnought (the ball socket that connects to the dreadnought core is the head), with the legs removed
- Dreadnought visor for the robot's own visor

Torso

- Space Marine terminator shoulder pads flipped on their sides for shoulders
- The dreadnought joint goes down to about the middle of the chest, after which there is a autocannon ammo case
- To bulk out the body, I used the cannon from the Hellhound, and put one piece on each side
- The back is a Space Marine Techmarine backpack

Arms

- There are chimera side-port guns inside of the shoulder pad joints with their lasguns removed
- The gun is a big shoota I believe, with an autocannon clip and barrel
- The machine arm is a servo arm from the Space Marine Techmarine

Legs

- The joint is made from a Battle for Macragge electric fence-thing, with the post removed and the power unit thinned down
- The thighs are made from parts from a Leman Russ dozer blade, I believe
- The ankles are made from a part from the Hellhound; I'm not sure what it's exact purpose was in the original model but they are basically unmodified from their original appearance
- Two Space Marine terminator shoulder pad heraldry markers (that's the best name I could come up with) are the knee caps
- The feet are from the Hellhound kit; they are the covers that go over the barrels, with a couple extensions removed to make them more resemble feet

Hopefully that explanation is relatively clear, I am certainly not skilled enough to write directions for Legos


Thanks for that advice CadianXV, you definitely made some good points about consistent painting. I think I was too worried about consistent modelling, and I know painting will go a long way to unify everything.

Well, I'm feeling galvanized to work again, with better time-management the project should start moving ahead again. Thanks for all the compliments guys, I'm overjoyed to see such a positive response to all of the things I've put up. I'm really trying to bust out some work so I can get to the thing I know everyone wants to see: painted models

After a month and a half of slumber, my blog has returned...like the Govenator, you can slow its progess but it cannot be stopped.

Okay, that is more dramatic than reality...I've been quite busy working about 55 hours a week and applying to grad school, and the free time I've had in between has been largely squandered. But that does not mean that I've abandoned work on the army; merely, I've just felt I haven't produced enough material to merit an update. But I do have some stuff to show you guys, and there is certainly more to come. The good news is every unit has been fleshed out to some degree, and now its largely a matter of doing minor gs work, cleaning moldlines, etc.

Anyway, here's two units I've been working on; not quite finished but far enough along for me to post:


Hellhound:










Adeptus Mechanicus Chimera (rather WiP)














The AM Chimera is Magos Serraxhon's personal transport in the battles that he is fielded in (1750pt battles). There is a noticeably larger AM influence in the command squads as compared to the troopers, which actually works out really well for making the leadership elements more centerpiece in the army.

I have an idea in my head, as far as continued fluff goes, that I'm going to call the army the Genswick 64th Engineer Corp. The reasoning behind this is, as per the original material, Magos Serraxhon has "acquired" this army from a passerby Imperial Fleet. I can picture him going to great lengths to forge documents and records to keep this a secret, even disguising the entire Mechanicus control by explaining the large amount of AM stuff in the fleet as a support element for the large engineer contingent. The fleet commander is just a puppet-leader, reporting in secret to Serraxhon, leading anyone who encounters the fleet to believe it is an Imperial expedition fleet exploring untapped regions of space. All very sneaky stuff...it even sounds a bit heretical! But I think it makes for very interesting fluff and certainly allows for an ease of explanation (calling them the 64th Genswick Engineer Corp is certainly easier than explaining the whole AM bit)

I've gotten a good amount of work done on my rough riders, ratlings, and heavy weapon teams so I hope so show them soon. Let me know what you guys think so far, I'm glad to be back posting in Dakka!

nice update. Glad to se eyour still at it.

So many ideas. Such fertile grafting and crafting.
This plog continues not just to impress, but to inspire.

Wow that Admech Chimera is Jawesome (jaw droppingly awesome). Cant wait to see you hit these guys with some paint! brilliant concept well executed!

Really nice work.

I love the Vehicles in this army.
Defiantely keep the canopy on the Chimera.
I can't wait to see it all painted.
Outstanding...

Gorgeous!

Alright, more Genswick fun!

The robot has improved a great deal since I last showed him; he just needs a cleaning (yes, I noticed the flash on the plasma cannon haha), minor gs work, and he'll be primed and ready to paint. Here's some shots of him with a guardsman for scale purposes:












(Sort of a menacing shot with the robot approaching the grenade-lobbing guardsmen, although in all honesty he's just an armored sentinel with a plasma cannon, so a krak-armed guardsman could actually take him down...)

In addition, my rough riders are pretty far along so I wanted to put some shots up. These guys are a straight take from Dave Taylor's army; in fact, they're even simpler! (Dave's horses are equipped with gas masks...something I'm not brave enough to approach with GS) Still, I really like how they turned out; very characteristic of the army overall.

















These guys are about done too; I plan to perfect the rough riders, "sentinel", chimera, and hellhound and get them primed and ready for painting, and then move on to the remaining units, which include the command squads, tech priest, heavy weapon teams, ratlings and grenadiers (vets). I'll put up finished shots of each before they get primed. The whole army will be completely finished before painting even begins (this is both a quirk of my personality and part of my limitation in space; I don't have enough room for paint and bits on my tiny work table).

The FW Chaos Renegade torsos really came in handy for accentuating sergeants, leaders etc, even if all I did was take the heads and backpacks. They kind of help create an AM influence in the army, while still maintaining a gritty appearance of the Genswick Rifles. I'm excited how far the project has come. Even in the stage it is now, there is a very unified look to the whole group together; I'll make sure to put up pictures of the whole army when it's finished. In the meantime, while I'm finishing up modeling, I'm going to start doing more research on painting so my plans there will be consistent and effective by the time they are implemented. As always I appreciate the remarks I've been getting, let me know if you guys have any critiques!

Those Rough Riders are excellent and I love the retro 50's look of the robot. For combining the elements together how about painting them in a red-brown camo pattern for the troopers with the Adeptus Mechanicus and Elites in a deep Red shade. It'd give a coomon colour type but with a status differentiation. To be honest though I don't think it would matter if they did look totally distinct.

Wow that flamer for the riders is amazing. Are the robots going to count as sentinals?

A tip from me, since rough riders have those explosive lances, how about strapping some grenades to the end of the halbreds?

@ Llamahead: Thanks for the suggesions on painting. That scheme is a pretty good one and I'm adding it to my list of possible schemes. I'm worried that painting them with too much red will be boring in a sort of typical AM army (though they will definitely have SOME red since a lot of them are AM units) or make them look like a traitor army. The other scheme I had in mind was from those WWI French troops I have on the first page, painting the soldiers in a blue-grey scheme with the main palette being that blue-grey and brown, and using a dark AM red as a highlight. I'm curious what everyone thinks about those schemes...I actually might go ahead and set up a poll a little closer to painting time

@ Empchild: Thanks as always! Yeah, the robot is just going to be an armored sentinel with a plasma cannon. Typically, he'll be following around a tech priest (as some extreme sort of retinue), which will hopefully allow for some protection for the tech priest and offer the robot some possibility of repair (if he doesn't just get blown to bits, that is)

@ loofacop: Yep, I'm definitely following your thinking! The halbreds actually already have grenades strapped to them, although they are pretty hard to see in the pictures. The back of the halbred has the grip of an auspex with two krak grenades immediately below it, which gives them the appearance of make-shift charges (atleast, when you see them up close).

I'm not quite sure how you plan to highlight with 2 completely different colours but the Shadow Grey with Red detailing would definitely work.

loofacop wrote:A tip from me, since rough riders have those explosive lances, how about strapping some grenades to the end of the halbreds?

if you look at them again on the lower backside you will see the grenades.

Looking great. I love your use of tubing and bits to spice up just about anything.

Nice touch about those grenade-laden halbreds, btw. Roughriders are a unit I have always wanted to try, but didn't want to fork out money for the model. They look great the way you did them up.

This is really awesome stuff you got

Looking great so far, Cant wait to see some more painted up. Should be a Very impressive army when finished, Loads of character

I really like your robot, very inventive! I've thought about making my own; yours is a great take on the concept.

Llamahead wrote:I'm not quite sure how you plan to highlight with 2 completely different colours but the Shadow Grey with Red detailing would definitely work.

Sorry about that, I didn't really explain the color palette correctly. Here's a more in-depth take:



What I've had in mind is that very light, blue-grey color for the coats and clothing, with brown satchels, backpacks, etc...and a mix of a few other earthly colors. The details (lenses, Mechanicus robes or insignia, other markings) would be a dark red, which is originally what I meant by using red as a highlight color. In this way I envision the main troops looking very much like the the soldier above, with the accompanying servitor-manned heavy weapon teams having more red mixed in with the palette. As you would move up in ranks towards the command squads, tech priest, and robot, there would be more red (as these units would be pure AM forces rather than actual Genswick soldiers).

I'm contemplating painting the tanks in a very earthly brown color, probably the same brown as the one used on the troops. Red would be used on these tanks mainly for picking out lenses, fuel tanks, high-tech equipment...something that would give the tanks the appearance of being old tanks that have been refitted with advanced technology.

At the same time, your paint scheme sounds pretty good too, so I'm a bit torn between the two of these and will hopefully make a decision shortly on which direction I want to (that, or put a poll up)

Thanks for all of the positive feedback guys, glad to see I'm still moving in the right direction with the army!

I like the Genswick Rifles, WWI theme but a bit different. I look forward to seeing them painted.

I gotta say, I absolutely love this army. Your conversions are inspired and add a ton of character and life to the models. I absolutely adore those Rough Riders! I could go on and on about each model, but suffice to say, this is an amazing army. I wish I had more constructive things to say then that, but I just had to tell you how much I love it. Keep up the good work!

@ Wolfs16: Thank you very much for the gracious comments Wolf! I'm very happy that I could inspire others with the army I'm putting together, and hopefully I can continue to do so as I unveil more of the remaining units.

I've got a small update today, I finished construction on my mortar teams. Theses guys are another straight transplant from Dave Taylor's army: they're the same Ork cannons retilted towards a higher trajectory, on 60mm bases with Genswick operators. The only real difference is the guardsmen themselves, but that's negligible. Honestly, some of Dave's units were so perfect there was no way I could improve on them! (mortars and rough riders being the big ones)














I've come up with a good plan on getting through my army construction and moving onto painting. It's going to break down like this:

CONSTRUCTION PHASE: Get the units completed assembled with all bits and positioning correct. A lot of units have passed this phase (all of the ones pictured), and as the remaining units complete construction, I'll put their pictures up too. Finishing construction will allow me to clean off my tabletop and remove all of my bit boxes (which take up a majority of my working space), sell those bits (since this is my only projected army), and get building finally out of my head! I remember reading an article about Dave Taylor's Adeptus Custodes (if you haven't figure it out, he's my biggest inspiration ), and he said something along the lines of having a hard time putting down his tools and going on to completion, and I identify with that all too well. However, I think this plan will help push me with some self-discipline, so we can all actually see this army painted before 2012 (gotta finish before the end of the world )

PREPARATION PHASE: This phase, which unfortunately will not entail that many pictures, should be admittedly short. I'm going to spend this time preparing my painting tools, techniques, paints, etc. which will take a bit of time to do all of the research and order everything I need. During that time, I will finish any GS work (anything significant will get a picture put up, but there shouldn't be a lot of significant stuff since my GS work is pretty minor), and I'll put an entire army picture up so everyone can see the whole thing on one table (I've done it before when some units were just bases, and the size was quite impressive in my mind). Now, if I work really fast, I can still be putting up pictures of recently finished units while on this phase, so I'll have to shoot for that!

PAINTING PHASE: Not much to explain about this. I'm planning to paint the army with playing it in mind, so I'll start with the troops, heavy weapons, small command squad, few tanks, etc. and work up to the expensive stuff. Well, back to work for me! The biggest change I'm trying right now is not leaving any of my time to idleness; if I'm not at work, I'm doing something else important, and finishing this damn army is important!!

Very small update here, just adding a picture of my Genswick-ified ratlings.





Not too much to say here; I'm a fan of the current ratling models (well, at first they were more just a curiousity, and as time went on I started to actually like them). I think they looked pretty good as the base models, and just added a couple of Genswick helmets to help tie them into the army (still need GS work to fit the helmets on perfectly), and they were good to go!

Those look characterful indeed. although I'd be tempted to add an aweful lot of the poachers gear to them Ratlings being what they are and all!

I like your conversions, your really nailing the world war I feel to them. now you just need some death korps of kreig to up against and call it a party.

Your making me desperately want to add some Genswick to IG force. I love what your doing.

Amazing stuff. Love the admech feel of your army. Cant wait to see them finished.

Jaw-on-floor!

These are incredible. I'm in love with those Rough Riders. If and when I get around to doing my IG, I'm definately gonna try to steal your Riders idea. Keep up the good work

Lookin really good so far. subscription started!

Love your ratling conversions! Still pretty much hate you for tempting me into IG. Must... resist...

Thanks for all the support guys, I'm glad that everyone is so thrilled about the work in the army. I think the best thing about the army as far as inspiration goes is that most everything I've built is unique by its combination of bits rather than raw sculpting skill (since all of my GS work is sculpting arms, hoods, and sandbags), so the ideas are pretty readily transferable to anyone who might wish to copy them, and I certainly hope that everyone can benefit from what I've been working on!

@Llama: haha, good point about the ratlings. I was almost leaning towards leaving them as they were when I got them, but I think I wanted to give them at least something small to identify them with the army, plus that Bretonnian helmet with the pigeon tied on fit perfectly with these guys!

@ Da Big Mek: Now that would be a battle I'll be looking forward to! Once I get my army finally completed, I'll have to try to find someone with a Dkok army, as I'm sure that'll look quite impressive on the table

@ Somnicide: Don't worry, you'll come around to the IG sooner or later

In other news, I finally decided to pick up a second GW case, which was a fairly big investment in my mind. I've had one case for probably at least 6-7 years and I've never had problems with it, so I hope the second case is as good as that one. I originally had a microphone case with the GW case in hopes of fitting my whole army between the two, but once I started packing away all my HQ and special units that have been sitting on my shelf, I realized they wouldn't all fit! So now I've converted my old case into a tank case (it already had four tanks in the bottom with a make-shift foam guard, so the last couple vehicles, sentinel, and heavy weapon teams will be adde to fill the case out), and my new case will cary all of my troops (and my microphone case went to my brother to hold his small collection of 40k models, so it didn't go to waste). I think this will make transport fairly easy as I can just switch trays out between the cases when I want a smaller army.

Well, as I said previously I'll try to leave you guys with a picture every couple of days or so, so here's a shot of my Techpriest and his servitor retinue:








I realize the techpriest hasn't changed (he's one of my favorite models!), but I did add a servitor retinue to assist him in battle. The cyber mastiff is an awesome model, it's a shame it's not easier to get because I could imagine a lot of people with it in their army. The servitor is just a SM servitor with a Sentinel chainsaw. I'm really fond of this group, so hopefully they perform well enough for me to make good use of them in the army. If not, I'm sure I can always find an excuse to spend the points on just the Techpriest.

I absolutely love the "Count-As" sentinel.. For some reason, it reminds me of a robot I've seen in some movie, but I can't exactlu pinpoint which specific movie that would be.. anyhow, it blends in nicely with the rest of you army theme..

Secondly, your Rough Riders are ace! Way better looking then GW's aweful approach. Maybe it's a tad to late for it, but perhaps a couple of those horses could have some of their legs replaced by bionic ones?

Again I have to say this is inspiring stuff. Might have to try at some genswicks myself sometime. *sneaks off to buy some bretonian men at arms*

EDIT: Where do you get the red tubes/wires from by the way?

ahhh this army is shapping up nicely

Brilliant stuff very inspiring I would definately put this in the top 10 army blogs on Dakka.

Demonslayer82 wrote:Brilliant stuff very inspiring I would definately put this in the top 10 army blogs on Dakka.

Definitely one of the best guard armies Ive seen. Simple but effective conversions that add to an overall suitably hardened look.

FerrumIgnatus wrote:Secondly, your Rough Riders are ace! Way better looking then GW's aweful approach. Maybe it's a tad to late for it, but perhaps a couple of those horses could have some of their legs replaced by bionic ones?

I'll have to look into that idea Ferrum. As it stands my bits box has been cleaned up, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to, but I've certainly seen a couple executions of bionic horse legs and they've always looked good.

Lexx wrote:\Where do you get the red tubes/wires from by the way?

The red tubes I bought at Radio Shack (small US electronics store for anyone not familiar with it), but basically it was just a spool of electrical wiring, the smallest diameter tubing I could find at the time. There's some copper wiring inside of it, so it provides a nice support for bending the wire into a position you prefer, and it glues on well enough to plastic and metal. The only problem I generally have with it is the size, which means I generally leave it for large tubing.

Thanks for the immense approval guys, I'm very happy that people find that much value of scrolling through what I've been working on. The excitement's getting to me as I get closer to painting. I wish I could move faster but most days I work from 8am to 9pm, so I find little time to get the type of work I want to do. But I'll keep plugging away as fast as I can! The proposition of actually playing with this army is too good to pass up

Brilliant work, as always- any chance of a group shot of what you have so far?

I'm enjoying these quite a bit. Excellent use of kit bashing and creativity! Well done!

I like it - very evocative of the 40K universe's mix of high and low tech that doesn't come through well in many armies. The roughriders are excellent indeed, and I also greatly like the artillery. Very interested to see some painted!

Thanks for the info accolade. Ill have to go to a local hardware store sometime and see what they have. Ive tried using guitar wire in the past for similar things but it hasn't turned out how I like. Think for when I get round to my Genswicks I might go for a Mechanized unit. Needless to say your force has given lots of inspiration for that.

Also what knights did you use for the lower parts of your rough riders? Grail or knights errant/realm?

Brilliant work-loving the nitty gritty realism.

The only thing is, now you can't stop-I NEED MOAR PICTURES ACCOLADE! MOAR UPDATES! WORK FASTA! .

OMG THOSE GUYS ARE AWSOME! i lost my jaw. ur army has just made me want to make a chimera simliar to ur first 1. i would do a Genswick army but im just lazy and have time management problems. oh well that chimera will just have to look epic by itself in my dessert raider army.

very good work

Your conversions have the horrible ability of being both incredibly inspiring and utterly soul-crushing at the same time. Love 'em! It's going to be one hell of a characterful army once it's done, can't wait to see more

Lexx wrote:Thanks for the info accolade. Ill have to go to a local hardware store sometime and see what they have. Ive tried using guitar wire in the past for similar things but it hasn't turned out how I like. Think for when I get round to my Genswicks I might go for a Mechanized unit. Needless to say your force has given lots of inspiration for that.

Also what knights did you use for the lower parts of your rough riders? Grail or knights errant/realm?

Yeah, I had worked with guitar wire in the past, but I hadn't had much success with it. The electrical wire was nice because of how well it bent. I sat in Radio Shack going through the different wire spools they had, mentally gauging their diameter and seeing how they bent...needless to say, I'm sure I probably creeped the clerk out!

I used Knights of the Realm for the rough riders. They were actually leftover units from a small Bretonnian force I was putting together a long time ago (as were the men-at-arms), and they really didn't require a whole lot of modification; it was basically taking the torso section of a man-at-arms and putting in on top of the knight legs and GS'ing the area between.


Okay, for Sunday I have some shots of my remaining heavy weapon teams, though I must say that these guys are going to need a LOT of cleaning and GS work, so don't beat me up to much for their shoddy state...well, that, and the competing areas of focus coupled with the metal and plastic on the models made some of the pictures not turn out so well. I'm sure they'll photograph much better when painted, but here's how they stand basically finished in construction:
















I saw some old Rogue Trader artwork a while back with servitors loading some heavy weapons (I believe it was AM laser destroyers and other odd weapons), and immediately decided I wanted to put some servitors on the heavy weapon teams. Luckily, Empchild donated to me a nice number of servitors that were largely put to use in these squads, so I am very thankful for that!

As with keeping to the mixed technology feel, I made sure to put a guardsmen on two of the teams, and I removed the legs of all of the servitors and added the Genswick leg sections (which were just sitting around after I took the torsos to make the rough riders). When I put up pictures of that original servitor on the first page of the blog, some people commented that it looked a bit too top heavy, so I went ahead and added bigger shoes to all of the servitor, which I think this offset the problem...but you guys will have to let me know what you think!

CadianXV wrote:Brilliant work, as always- any chance of a group shot of what you have so far?

I'll be posting the whole army pretty soon. I want to get pictures of all of the units up on Dakka before I post the group shot. That should give me some time to try to base, clean, and prime a couple more units before it's time to put up the big picture.

In other news, I'm going to try to play a combat patrol with this army on the upcoming Sunday the 13th at a local game store called Parker, Banner, Wayne, and Kent in order to start getting used to how the army plays. I believe some Dakkaites live in the Charlotte area, so I'm going to see if I have any luck finding one who would like get a game in. I'll put a post up in the Find a Game forum, but if anyone lives around Charlotte and would like to help me play this army, let me know!

i Really like the Servitors as gun crew! reminds me of the old school Tarantulas!

amazing use of all of those bits man cheers! I can't wait to see this all done.

Have to agree with the 'great use of bitz' comment. you've managed to integrate a lot of diffferent stuff into one cohesive force. Good work!

hey Accolade, i wa wondering what you used for the roof of the Genswick chimera, if you dont remeber it dosnt matter,
nice heavy weapons
you continue to amaze

Commissar Agro wrote:hey Accolade, i wa wondering what you used for the roof of the Genswick chimera, if you dont remeber it dosnt matter,
nice heavy weapons
you continue to amaze

The old rooftop for the chimera that I believe you're referring to Agro is an odd item I bought off of Ebay. I had done some searching for patterned plastic sheets to build flooring for a number of buildings I had in the past and found that item when I was searching. I unfortunately can't think of a better name for it, but it should be adequate to help you get started. If anyone else has a better name for it I'd like to know myself! Now, if you were talking about another part of the construction of the chimera, let me know and I'll get into more depth.

To prove I have been working on the project, I have a shot of my guardsmen who have all received their basing:




As an aside, that picture shows about half of my working space!! Not too much area to spread out at all.

These guys are fresh from basing, so I need to flick off the excess material. That's actually about half of my overall troop force, and I plan on trying to finish basing the rest of the units tonight, which would be a pretty big accomplishment for me to get all of that done in a day. This shot is three squads of guardsmen (without their heavy weapon teams), my ratlings, and my veterans. The basing does wonders for creating unity throughout the army, so I'm really hyped to see how everything looks when it's all laid out. More to come soon!

yeah thats it. thanks for the help, when i finally get arround to searching i will tell you if i find a better name for it, but i cant at the momment because im up to my ears in exams.

they look good

Hey Guys,

I've got up an update for the blog. First off, here is my (first) company command squad. This is where things get a little more Mechanicus...




Company Commander & Female Techpriest (got the idea from Commissar Molotov, although the model is only *barely* noticeably female...which is probably better than a typical female model). She has a skull masl under the hood and wields a plasma gun, though she just counts as a veteran.









The big hovering relay counts as a Master of Ordnance. The guardsman was originally my Master of Ordnance, but now he just has a vox.



The hovering cloaked servo-skull just counts as a veteran as well (I wasn't really sure what else to run him as and I'd like to actually have a purpose for him rather than just being decorative). The guardsman is obviously a sniper



I'm pretty satisfied with how these guys came out. The commander is the Forge World Titan Princeps. When I first got him I was a little frustrated with his more realistic scale, which put him a head above most of his compatriots and he is much thinner to boot. I think the base and the few GW bits I put him helped balance him out with the squad, and he's a cool model to boot!

I played my first game on Sunday with the army, which was a blast. It was just a combat patrol, which was fine with me because it allowed me to get more used to the 5th edition (I still think in the 4th edition, and luckily my opponent was very willing to help me adjust). Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera and didn't take any pictures, but it probably worked better because I spent some time picking up new rules. My opponent brought a demon army he was preparing for Adepticon, so he wiped the table with me in the first game (without making me feel like crap). The second game he went out of his way to help me run my army better, and that went pretty well until the store closed and we had to call it quits. I'm going to try to keep playing combat patrols and small games to get into the swing of things, and hopefully I'll be able to play effectively in the near future.

Playing also makes me want to have my army painted so it can look much more impressive, which I think will help me get along faster. I finished doing my last couple pieces of terrain and basing is complete, so now I need to get all of the models ready for spray painting.

As per the requests, I'll leave you guys with a couple of shots of the entire army, laid out on my kitchen table:

As always your army contiunes to amaze.
Keep up with the good work

Excellent!

Thanks for showing us the whole army laid out on your kitchen table. It really helped me to understand the scope of your project. I'm enjoying your posts!

No problem JB! I'm surprised somebody dug this up while I've been on hiatus working towards having enough new stuff to merit an update.

Since this has been brought back to the forefront of the blogs, I should include a little bit of info on what I've been doing...

Let's see, first off, the ratlings are probably out as far as my max 1850 list is concerned. I'm picking up a couple Vostroyan snipers to add to my Company Command Squad, which will run cheap in smaller games with 3 snipers, a regimental standard/vox, and camo cloaks. I hadn't had much success with the ratlings, so they might just be cut and sold off. I added another veteran squad to my big list, and I'm going to take the servitors off of the heavy weapons and make them vets with plasma guns. More details have been scupted, models have been cleaned, etc. Mainly, I'm just waiting to get in a couple of bits to finish off building that last couple things. I'll put up pictures of units that have changed, though I made hold off until they're painted so the posts will be really worthwhile.

I've been playing some combat patrols with the army, and they've been going really well. I think I've set down a really competitive list, that has been doing well against all of the armies I've fought (except daemons, which decimated me ). I've been having a lot of fun playing and there haven't been any big count-as confusions, which is very good news in my mind.

Finally, I've been looking at pictures of Adepticon 2010 and I must say, the stuff coming out from it looks AMAZING. I want to make my goal to have this army completely finished down to the smallest detail by next year, because I'd really like to go that event. Now all I have to do is get the color scheme set down...I'll post up a little later on my ideas for schemes, and have people vote on that.

Thanks for the group shot! Looking forward to seeing the first licks of paint on this exceptional army!

Just wanted to say that this here blog is awesomely inspiring! A job well done, and some very clever usage of bits!

Consider most ideas nicked for some =I=Munda miniatures!

WOW thats one amazing army, it must have taken you for ever to convert them all, especially like the tanks

Keep going

Spot on work on that robot there, it looks like a real Citadel Kit to be honest, Very nice work

Stunning work there accolade, your conversions are great can't wait to see some paint on them!

Thanks for the comments guys! I appreciate all of it as always, it helps me keep this project on track when it is so easily derailed due to time constraints.

Well, with almost all construction completed (some slight changes and a second squad of veterans are on their way), I'm getting into the mindset of painting...and that's where you guys come in! I've been brainstorming this a lot, but I really haven't been able to come up with a decision on how I should paint this army. I put a poll up on the first page with information about each scheme in an update on the first post, so I'd really like to hear anyone's advice on how these fellows should look! I put an "Other" option on there, because I half-expect someone to shoot out an amazing new scheme that I haven't even thought of! (that, and the schemes are all open to tweaking)

Let me know what you guys think! I'm going to get on to purchasing my painting supplies!

Dark colours browns and greens but as it is Mechanicus based use some bright reds, Mechanicus followers are very devout and would keep that part of thier gear clean even if the rest fell into disrepair

thread necro= bad

Alas, it has been a very long time since I last posted here, with the threat of thread necromancy looming over this blog. I figured I should probably provide an update to prevent the blog from getting locked.

Life has been a bit busy as of late, I moved to Raleigh at the beginning of the month and it's been taking some time getting adjusted, leaving the army to sit for a while. I found some local gaming shops and managed to get a 1500pt game in, which was quite fun! (I'm happy to know I enjoy playing as well as modelling ) One of the guys I was playing with gave me some interesting things to think about, which I think figured would merrit a post.

Now, I haven't been asleep at the tank steering equipment, the army has been getting a good deal of work put into it, even if it has been a lot of cleaning mold lines, filling in gaps, working on GS skills, etc. I've been trying to get a bit ahead so my future posts would actually be closer to the painting. As it stands, the entire army is based, and only a few units need some cleaning/GS work before they'll be spray painted and ready for paint! This being said, the army has grown a bit since its last appearance. I've added the following units, all with the trench/Adeptus Mechanicus theme of the rest of the army:

- Third chimera, which serves as the command chimera. The other tech-chimera has since been scrapped and turned into a chimera similar to the original open-topped one.
- Psyker battle squad
- Ogryns
- Stormlord, the figurepiece of the army!

I decided on the blue-grey scheme of the French WWI soldier, based off of my own preference and the fact that it was by far the most popular paint scheme.

My army is built to its maximum size of about 2750 (including the Stormlord). The only thing that may change is the fluff background I came up with for the army. As I was saying about the advice I recieved, the guy I played with was explaining to me he thought my army was Guard from a knight world. I wasn't actually sure what knight world was, and came to realize it was a feudal world that had been taken over the Adeptus Mechanicus. Society on these feudal worlds actually remained intact, as the tech priests of the AM offered the knights and lords of the planet Knight Titans, bipedal walkers smaller than the Warhound titan but still packing ferocious weaponry. These walkers give the planet the name knight worlds, as knights use them to control their domains, wage battles between other lords, and go to war under the Adeptus Mechanicus as support for their titan legions (you can google it if you're interested, there's only a bit of information from old GW lore).

With all of that in mind, I thought to myself "would this be a better background?" The army certainly fits the image I have of knight worlds, and doing this would just require a slight rewriting of the background (which I can't help, I like making every detail perfect ). However, I am pretty content with the size of my army, and the prospect of buildling a knight titan seems like an unnecessary financial expenditure, as I doubt I'll even be using my Stormlord all that much. I had the thought of writing the planet background as being slightly more regressed than other knight worlds, in that knights and lords ride on either Leman Russes or Superheavies (as a replacement for knights).

I realize this is a lot of text without any pictures, but I would like some advice on the background if anyone has an opinion. I was thinking about calling the army the Otticonian Reserves, from the knight world Otticon, under the forge world Corinthe (this is an actual forge world in official fluff). Of course my other option is to just forget all this knight world nonsense, and stick with the Genswick 64th, or the Genswick 64th Engineer Corps. I don't think this discussion is interesting enough to sponsor another poll, so I'll see what people say and get working on putting some pictures up in the near future (I'm also trying to get all of my photos up on dakka, so my entire blog can be dakka-sponsored). So the Otticonian Reserves, or the Genswick 64th...which background is better?

Thanks for the continued interest in the army!

Well Accolade, I think you could nail the Knight World with no problem. With the heavy influence of Adeptus Mechanicus you have, this army is ready to be a prime example. I don't think you'd have to include a Knight in this army at all.

This could be the exploration team of a Tech-mage. With a sizable force of Otticonians and vehicles he's upgraded, your fearless leader is out searching for lost tech. Could even write it in that this is a long tradition of your Forgeworld. To better understand the impact of the Machine Omnisiah and his doings, all of their high level Tech-Magi must undergo this ritual of seeking.

Just my thoughts =D

Can't wait to see some of your Genswick boys painted!

-Deewalla

Your welcome, i saw Deewalla's Genswick aand it reminded me of yours and wondered if you had added to it, and even though it told me it was over three months old it had something to do with it and was wondering if you where still doing it, so im glad your still intrested, looking forward to seeing that stormlord

I think go with the Knight world idea, it sounds cool. can't wait to see your new stuff.

Good to hear that your still at it

I actually prefer the traveling exporator flufff tbh. The idea of an Admech priest taking control of an army seems fantastic to me. However you could tweak it a bit I suppose- instead of unwilling pawns, the fighting men become brave volunteers supporting a local FW in its quest for STC devices.

I think the idea CadianXV has is a good one.

I'm very happy to get all of these responses on the fluff! Thank you Deewalla and CadianXV for your suggestions, it's been helping me come up with two solid backgrounds, both of which are similar (to the average player) but ultimately would affect the finished product of the army:

1) Magos Explorator "acquires" the Genswick 64th:

- This idea is the original direction I was going in. It has an interesting shade-of-grey theme going, as to whether the army is still radical or loyal.
- This idea keeps the army as the Genswick 64th, so I'll be focusing hard on reinforcing the trench theme as much as possible.
- There will be no need for a Knight Titan in this army, as I already have a monstrous Stormlord for a figure piece in large battles
- Identifiable AM units include the psyker battle squad (which is made of servo skulls, more on that later), the robot, tech priest, tech lord, and some of the weapons and systems on tanks, units, etc.
- This goes with the traveling explorator theme
- The army is also easily explainable as the Genswick 64th, with no further explanation than it being an IG army (after all, who needs to know whose pulling the strings? )

2) Knight World army

- Army scheme, while mostly identical, would be focused around the theme of the peasant army under their leader knight. In this case, the army color (blue-grey) is the same as the heraldy of the knight and his mount
- This army would try to look more mideval than the Genswick to really reflect the knight world theme (not sure how different it would look, but still)
- The army could be called the Otticonian Reserves (this is just an idea, it would need to be different than the Genswick and I thought it was a decent name, but I'll let someone else judge that)
- An idea that ties both themes together is making the army a knight's questing army, under the command of an errant knight sent on some manner of Tech Quest in the name of the AM before he can earn his mount. I find this an interesting theme, but I feel it might be so in-depth people might just look at me odd if I were to explain it
- This army could have a Knight, and the more I've thought about it the more I realize I could do it without losing my will to go on. As Deewalla was saying, it isn't necessary, but I am afraid that a Knight World army without a Knight is well, silly

I hope that little explanation helps you guys get my thoughts on the matter. I've been setting up my work space and camera area so I can get this tank engine running again. Let me know what you guys think!

Now when i think about it, the idea of the Genswick sounds better than a questing knight world army...

but Knights are cool, have you looked in the dakka gallery at the knight titans, they look great.

I think the whole im a tech preist oh look an army, i need this army and takes command thing is awsome.

ultiamtely its your choice so what ever floats your boat.

Definatly option one for me

Alright guys, I've got an update for you with some pictures. To let you know where the Genswick stand, I'm getting close to finishing the long process of cleaning and green stuffing the entire army. I'll post units as they become ready-for-paint, as well as the WIP of the brand new units.

Today I have the pictures of my troop platoon (excluding the mortar teams):


Platoon command Squad










Infantry Squad 1
















Infantry Squad 2













]

I'll get a picture of the whole platoon up once I finish cleaning the mortar teams. I should be able to supply a good number of updates while I finish up this work and begin gathering the painting supplies. As always let me know what you guys think.

Thanks

Looks good
I like the nade launchers and the autoguns
keep up the good work!

The mortars are finished, which puts the entire troop platoon as ready for painting. Here's photos of the mortar teams:














With that, I have a picture of the entire platoon together:





They've served me quite well in the games I've played. I generally run the two troop squads together, and keep the command squad behind them to offer some trench-clearing support, or righteously smite those who kill the squads off. Surprising, the squad(s) have faired well in their share of close combat melees, even in desperate rounds of combat...at least that's been my luck. It's happend so much I started saying my sergeants are particularly gritty, and go crazy seeing their brothers fall (and their attacks sometimes kill something, which is great!)

The last thing I have for today is my prepared rough riders:








I altered the flamethrower into a meltagun, which will work better when the squad has finished their single viable round of close combat. I really enjoy using this unit, people are often not familiar with how they work and put a phenomenal amount of killing power into 5 guardsmen, protecting other fragile elements of my army from fire. Keeping them behing the tanks works well in that they're a great counter-attack unit! They've killed squads of assault marines, obliterators, and all manner of other space marine units...they even survived a round of combat with a demon prince and tied him up long enough to prevent him from butchering my lines. Of course they've had their share of hiding in cover and being pummeled to death by my opponents, so I do my best to protect them.

That's all I have for now, I'll keep working on finishing up the last elements of the army and putting pictures up. Thanks

Love the way this is turning out. It is exciting to see an army oozing with character, all heavily converted. Seeing a whole platoon together really gets me psyched to see them painted, and to get working on my own!

Keep up the good work.

Very nice work, probably one of my favorite ever dakka blogs. (it even inspired me to make some myself) One question however, where did you get this awesome looking gun on this guy?

Looks like an old Necromunda Autogun.

Fantastic work... have been dreaming of doing similar lately... however, not all those bits used are GW. COuld you identify whihc ranges and suppliers you used please?

@ vodo40k: Flinty is correct, it is a combination of a cadian arm with the stock intact, an old Necromunda autogun and an ammo clip that I believe came from some Chaos space marines.

@ AvatarForm: actually, everything I used to build this army is 100% GW bits. It was a little challenge I had when I made the army to stay completely within their ranges so I could theoretically play in a GW-sanctioned event. I can answer any questions you have about bits if you'd like something specific, so just let me know.

Your IG are looking really good. Keep it up.

Great Work!
looks top notch!

Update for today, I have shots of the first veteran squad and the hellhound. I'll start with the veteran squad:





The chimera is actually a different chimera from the original one I showed, and this one has a heavy flamer on the front. The original chimera has been saved for the psyker battle squad, which I will put photos of up eventually.








The veteran squad has remained largely unchanged, although I did add another shotgun veteran. I still have the guardsmen with the demo charge, and he'll sometimes join this squad, or perhaps function as a count-as Marbo. I keep forgetting to use the demo charge when I am using him in the squad, so I might just put it in another unit (possibly the lascannon/meltagun veteran squad). Here's how they stand currently:


















And here's primed shots of the hellhound with the WIP crew man:















This guy is the crew man who stands on the back. Although it's hard to tell, he's smoking a small GS cigarette. I figured it was suitable with the background fluff detailing hellhound crew as pyromaniacs, he might as well enjoy a smoke with such a big lighter attached to the tank haha.

Well that's all I have today. I'm getting really far along with priming models up to be ready for painting. I did get a bit sidetracked with the idea of building a big display case, so I may be working on that soon (this build-everything-then-paint-everything philosophy is a bit of an annoying habit)

Your Genswicks are looking fine. Making me feel guilty about not spending as much time as I should on my Genswicks. =D

-Deewalla

Deewalla wrote:Your Genswicks are looking fine. Making me feel guilty about not spending as much time as I should on my Genswicks. =D

-Deewalla

Haha don't worry about that Deewalla...it's actually taken me about a year to get to this point!

Alright, I have an update with a brand new unit for a change: my five-man Ogryn squad. I got the idea to build these from Col. Gravis' Praetorian Guard army, found here:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/257047.page

I really like how well they fit in his Praetorian Guard, with the uniforms they wear and weapons they carry; plus they are much cheaper than the metal ogryn models. So I copied this idea fairly liberally, although I didn't have the desire (or skill ) to have them wearing Genswick uniforms. I wanted them to look a bit like super mutants from Fallout 3, very bulky and barbaric, and highly dangerous; their armor would mainly be metal plating scavenged together and their weapons would look like they are part of the Genswick arsenal.

Here's how they came out:






The Bone'ead still gets his enhancements, as I also wanted these guys to stick with the theme of being pressed into the command of a tech priest. As a bonus for his loyalty, he recieved a bionic eye, a chainsword, and a servo skull (the perks of the Machine God are quite nice indeed )













It was a bit of a trick to fill in that belly hole, and I admit it was a new skill for me to make belts. I had a bit of help from my brother's fiance, who is a sculptor and gave me some tips on how to make them without too much hassle. I feel that they came out pretty well, not perfect consistency, but the equipment that I added to the belts and the positioning of the arms does a lot to take focus away from that area. Most of the remaining GS work was relegated to adding straps to the armor bits; I didn't want the ogryns to look *too* much like orks, and I do feel that adding these straps helps make them look a little more intelligent...although I'm not sure who would be smarter, an ork or ogryn...

I rebuilt my old Adeptus Mechanicus tech chimera to keep it in line with the other chimeras (a lot of people I played commented that they thought it was something different than a chimera, and I like to keep consistency). The newer version looks a little tougher, and it still has some of the old elements from its prior incarnation. The result is a chimera that looks like it was reinforced more heavily than the troop variants. As such, this special chimera will serve the ogryns in the games that I use them, and otherwise will function as the HQ chimera. Here's how it's looking:










Well that's all I have for now. I'll continue working on finishing up the elements of the army. On a side note I bought a glass cabinet to store my army in. I'm building that currently and I'll be putting the army in there soon. Hopefully I should be able to start painting soon; I'm selling all of my old stuff over the next couple days so I can focus solely on painting this army up. I look forward to your thoughts guys.

Wow that new Chimera turret is alot different!

Love the look of your Ogryns. Can't wait to see em painted. Any idea how many points you currently have built?

Cheers!
-Deewalla

The chimera conversion looks good. Can't want to see some painted models.

I like your ogryns a lot.
Can't wait to see the first painted model.

Both chimera and ogyrns look good
Nice use of the baneblade sponsons for the turrent of the new chimera.
I love the bone ead and the guy with chain mail on his helemet, it makes him look badass!

aaaah, Baneblade sponson turret... so THATS what it is. Wow, fits right in. Very nice choice.

Cheers!
-Deewalla

Awesome looking Ogryns. How much cheaper is it to use the Fantasy Ogres than the 40k Ogryns?

I'm stealing your stolen idea of Ogryns. Really liking the look of the tanks too.
Could you post a tutorial of how you did them if you haven't already?

A lot cheaper. A box of 6 ogre bulls is $40, whereas metal ogryns are over $20 each.

Commissar Agro wrote:Both chimera and ogyrns look good
Nice use of the baneblade sponsons for the turrent of the new chimera.
I love the bone ead and the guy with chain mail on his helemet, it makes him look badass!

Thanks Agro! I agree, that chainmail mask makes him look crazy dangerous, and he fits right in the with the sergeant with the chainmail mask (I might need to get a picture of them fighting off some xenos together...they could be a crazy duo of sorts

Deewalla wrote:aaaah, Baneblade sponson turret... so THATS what it is. Wow, fits right in. Very nice choice.

Yeah, I came up with the idea when I bought my Stormlord kit; however, I didn't want to lose my superheavy's sponsons and went ahead and bought a replacement on Ebay. I must say it came out terrific. I decided to keep the other tanks with their original turrets, so that this tank would really stand out as a command variant.

deadmeat85 wrote:Awesome looking Ogryns. How much cheaper is it to use the Fantasy Ogres than the 40k Ogryns?

Quite a bit cheaper as Cobra said. I actually ordered all of the bits on Ebay, buying torsos, arms, heads, and an assortment of Ork bits to complete the models...all-in-all, I would say I spent about 40 or less for the whole group, which would only the amount of two metal orgryns. Plus, the plastic ones are nice and light and don't feel like they'll put a hole in the floor if you drop them.

Golden Eyed Scout wrote:I'm stealing your stolen idea of Ogryns. Really liking the look of the tanks too.
Could you post a tutorial of how you did them if you haven't already?

I've never written a tutorial before, so you'll have to bear with me. I don't have any additional WIP pictures of the ogryns, but I did modfiy a couple of them to hopefully explain what I did. Here's an idea of how I did it.


1. First off, make sure that after you prepare your green stuff that you allow for 20-30 minutes for curing. This is a crucial, as you don’t want it to cave too far into the ogre’s chest cavity when you’re working on it

2. Take an ogre bull model and carve off the area around the gut plate cavity so that it is flush with both the pants and chest (ideally you’re trying to prevent any protrusion of the gut, unless you do want your ogryns to have big guts)

3. Take a green stuff ball about the size of the ogryn’s gut hole and slightly flatten it into a pizza-disc shape. Place the disc over the gut. You’ll want some of the green stuff to go into the hole (note: don’t fill the entire cavity with GS, just about half) so that any shaping you do does not simply push the green stuff into the cavity

4. You’ll want the green stuff to be sticking out a bit farther than the body because what you’ll be doing is pushing a lot of it into the cavity to make the shape of the belt.

5. Use clay shapers to start smoothing the edges of the green stuff to the body. This will help anchor the green stuff as you work and give you a line of reference when you are sculpting. I can’t recommend using clay shapers enough. They bend as you smooth the green stuff, and won’t drag it along or push it too far into the cavity by accident

6. You’ll want to press in the area above and below the belt, and doing so will create the shape of the belt (so curve the shape of the pressed-in area to match the shape of the belt. See the following picture for reference)



7. The trickiest part is really the belt buckle, but this again is all about indentation to make the shape. Once you have the shape of the belt the way you would like it and the areas above and below the belt smoothed down to the level of the rest of the body, you’ll be ready to make the buckle. Make two vertical lines in the belt to create the two edges of the buckle. You may want to use a sharper tool such as GW’s sculpting tool, as it makes for a nice, sharp contrast. Curve the corner from the vertical line to the horizontal section of the belt to create the overall shape of the belt (See the following picture for reference)



8. The inner portion of the belt is made in much the same way, by using a sharp tool to create vertical line on the left portion of the buckle and two horizontal lines that create the interior edges of the buckle. Note that these three notches should be a bit thicker, as the combination of the three will create the buckle hook (See the following picture for reference).



9. The armor plating is all from ork bits, and is really just a matter of taste. Adding a strap around the limb connecting the corners of the plate together adds a nice touch of detail, and making these is quite easy so it's definitely worth the effort. Take a piece of green stuff and roll it into a hot dog shape and progressively lengthen it until you have it long enough so that you can wrap it from one corner of the plate to the other. Flatten the roll into a long strip; be careful not to flatten it too much as it will become too thin and fragile. After this, you simply wrap it around the arm/leg, push the ends into the corners of the plate to connect everything and secure the green stuff (See above picture for reference).

10. You're all set! Now use your big new friends to stomp out the enemies of the Emperor!


That should really be all of it. I hope this helps explain the process. It's not that hard of task to be honest; I'm not a great sculptor and I managed to get some quite acceptable results. Keep in mind you can cover up the corner regions with pouches to clean up any rough areas. If anyone has any questions about the tutorial or anything more in-depth, just let me know!

Accolade wrote:
@ AvatarForm: actually, everything I used to build this army is 100% GW bits. It was a little challenge I had when I made the army to stay completely within their ranges so I could theoretically play in a GW-sanctioned event. I can answer any questions you have about bits if you'd like something specific, so just let me know.

Where are your heads sourced from? They cannot all be empire men at arms.

@ AvatarForm: most of the heads are the bretonnian men-at-arms (with some bowmen and knight heads as well) as you said, some of which have cadian gas masks on (with green stuff tubing). I also have some cadian heads in there, at least one flagellant head, and all of the the full-head masks are FW renegade torsos, just without the torsos....I know, an absurdly expensive conversion to get these heads, but in my defense I didn't originally buy the FW renegades for this purpose.

Genswicks are not for the faint of wallet.

(As I put a Saber Defence Heavy Stubber Platform on the back of my converted Ork Halftrack....)

Great stuff Accolade. I just hope I can finish mine in under a year.

Cheers!
-Deewalla

Looking good, loving the chimera turret, looks very WW1

I actually meant a tutorial for the tanks. But the Ogre one is alot more useful.

Golden Eyed Scout wrote:I actually meant a tutorial for the tanks. But the Ogre one is alot more useful.

Haha, my mistake! I reread your comment after you said that and it became quite clear. Well building the Chimeras is quite easier; I can summarize it in a much shorter manner than the ogryns.

- The tank chasis is actually from the Hellhound kit, mainly because it has flooring in the back. I'm not sure if the updated Chimera has the flooring details, as I built them before it was available.
- You just start with a stripped down Chimera chasis and add a couple of components. The side walls that surround the fuel tanks are attached as usual for a Hellhound, as is the curved back door. The slit pieces that I have above them...to be honest I don't recognize those parts other than being from the Chimera kit (I think they are meant to cover the shooting ports in a normal Chimera).
- One Chimera has a turret taken directly from a Baneblade, and the other two have a Chimera hatch with the armor plating from an Ork kannon (the rest of the cannon became the mortars for the mortar teams), a customized multilaser (built from the Hellhound chemical cannon and a lascannon's end piece), and a Genswick guardsman.
- The rest is just mainly detailing...cadian backpacks, shovels, guns, etc.

That's really all there is to it; it's quite easy to put together bar the gunner (although if you have the Baneblade sponson it's even easier). All of the tanks are magnetized, so the turrets come off whenever they *eventually* get blown off due to intense enemy fire.


Thanks for the support guys, I don't have much for the weekend, but I'll post what I do have. Here's a shot of my WIP tank crewmen:





The servitor and fat guy with the hammer sit on the back of my Medusa tank. The smoker rides on the back of the Hellhound. The other thing I have for today are a couple of sprayed shots of the techpriest and the ratlings:








I'll be back soon with a new unit. Hope all of you stateside have a good 4th of July!