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So I finished the second Arbites w/power fist. In either WH or IG I think I will use this guy as a priest w/an eviscerator. He could also make a good Commissar in an IG list.



Here is a group shot of all of my completed priests or what I like to call Special Assignment Judges. Two power fist/eviscerator guys, one plasma gun and a shotgun.



I hope you all like, hopefully I can get some tanks done this week, as always comments appreciate.

Reinforcements have arrived.



These guys arrived Thursday and I am hoping to convert some to have meltaguns and add them to some bolter armed arbites to represent sister squads in my army. I should be able to get two full squads out of these with some leftovers for other projects. Not quite sure yet what I am going to equip the sergeants with though.

Update Time!
I managed to get some modeling and painting done this week.
I got 4 rhinos finished the other day. For now this is the basic color scheme I am going with. Maybe someday down the road I will get some etched brass eagles and Inquisition symbols, but they are good enough to play now. I think I will keep my eyes open for something to use as police lights on them.


Close up shot. Some of these rhinos are beat up when I got them. I had to give all of them new storm bolters and a few are missing exhaust pipes.


An Arbites Judge (Inquisitor) and his squad outside his ride. I was concerned at first that the blue spray paint would not match the arbites blue, but I was pleasantly surprised when it dried. The blue on the arbites is regal blue from GW; I used a blue spray paint from Wal-Mart on the tanks. I turned out a little more glossy then I wanted, but for the most part it is a good match.


I also managed to work on my melta-gun guys this week. I will use them and bolter armed arbites as sisters of battle.



I also made this arbite judge w/bolter to be a sister superior. I can’t take credit for this conversion idea, I saw something similar on ArbiterIan’s blog and thought it looked cool. So here is a shout out to him for some inspiration.


I noticed the other day that I was starting to accumulate a lot of headless models that have been used for swaps. Feeling a little more confidant in my green stuff skills I decided to try and copy some heads to put these guys back in the lines. Buy putting heads back on these guys I can fill out a few more units and save some cash on ebay. For a first attempt they didn’t turn out half bad, I might have to redo a few chins but I can live with that. I might even try this on some SM scouts to add some snipers into the army.



A close up of the best one


This one turned out good as well.


Well that’s it for now I am hoping to get another 4-5 tanks finished this week then I may work on an arbites squad with bolters & melta guns (SOB). Hope you all like, and if you do please leave a comment.

Update Feb 29th
Well I found some time this week to work on some more tanks. I managed to finish an Immolator and 2 exorcists. Like my rhinos I might add some etched brass eagles and inquisition symbols but they are table top ready now.



The Immolator I converted on a whim from an old predator I had laying around and never used. I think it will see much more action this way. Even though this was a spur of the moment conversion I love it. I think I want to add maybe 1 if not 2 more like it. It just looks beefy to me. I just cut off the lascannons and glued on some extra multi melta barrels. I have not figured out how I am going to put a storm bolter on it yet, as you can see from the rest of my tanks I don’t like the look of the pintal mounts hanging off the hatches. Sometimes simplicity is best so I might just leave it alone.




The Exorcists I made out of the old style SM Whirlwind. The only thing I really did to this was to add a new storm bolter and cut out the SM in the turret. I then filled the turret with some green stuff and added a spot light from the IG tank accessory spru. I like how the lights turned out. It has that “stop in the name of the law” look.




I also had a few spare SM hatches laying around so I primed them to match the tanks and they fit well into the whirlwind turret slots. So these guys can double as extra rhinos in times or need. I might get around to finishing the hatches this week, but there is no hurry they will not be used as rhinos anytime soon.



Well that’s it for today. Next I think I will be working on another squad and maybe some chimeras. Hope you like comments welcome.

Great army, I love the Arbites models too. One of the first WD's I ever bought had a Necromunda battle rep with them and I've wanted some ever since!

I'm liking the conversions of the heroes, really helps them stand out against the grunts without making them look out of place.

Lets hope 6th ed brings a codex that allows the use of brilliant units like this.

That's good work. Nice green stuffing too.

As a suggestion, have you thought about using the new Grey Knights codex? They have several pages worth of entries for henchmen of all shapes and sizes, including psykers and enforcers.

It might be a good match for you list. No Excorsits tho.

smiler wrote:Great army, I love the Arbites models too. One of the first WD's I ever bought had a Necromunda battle rep with them and I've wanted some ever since!

I'm liking the conversions of the heroes, really helps them stand out against the grunts without making them look out of place.

Lets hope 6th ed brings a codex that allows the use of brilliant units like this.

Thanks, I had a similar experience, one of the first things we had was a 2ed catalog with a couple good pics of the arbites. I was hooked ever since. I am also very happy with the character models I think of them as the center piece of the army.


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Celtic Strike wrote:That's good work. Nice green stuffing too.

As a suggestion, have you thought about using the new Grey Knights codex? They have several pages worth of entries for henchmen of all shapes and sizes, including psykers and enforcers.

It might be a good match for you list. No Excorsits tho.

Thanks this project more than any other has helped my green stuff skills. I have toyed with the idea of other codex' but usually run into problems. With IG I loose out on my rhinos,crusader models and heavy bolters, but just about everything else fits in some way. Bolter armed guys can be storm troopers, cyber mastifs can be combat servitors and my exorcists can be manticors. I only have a 3 chimeras in this army right now . I could use a few from my IG army until I can get more chimeras for the arbites, but then the rhinos collect dust again.

Your right about GK though, you can do so much with the henchmen and I can have rhinos & chimeras. the problems I run into with them is there are no grenade launchers and I have a lot of them. I have thought about haveing them switch to "plasma grenades" in a combat and use them as plasma guns. The shotgun armed guys can be storm bolters so that is easy and most of the other stuff fits in some way. But, as you said no exorcists, thats not really a deal breaker though I have the extra hatches and they could just be more rhinos if I had to, or get some old razorback tops for them. The possibility of making an Arbites storm raven and dreadnought is tempting.

I have toyed with the idea of dividing the army in two. Making half an IG army and the other half a Sisters army using the WD dex or GK and just put them together for really big games or mega battles.

I guess the bigges problem I face is I don't want to overwhelm and confuse my opponent with count as/proxy models. Most of the guys at my local GW are cool with the WH list, and they can actually hold their own agains some newer lists. If I had to use a current codex for a tourny or if my oppenent didn't want to play against WH I think the IG codex is best for WYSIWYG. More then anything the army is a labor of love, but I do need to get more games in with them though.

This stuff is awesome baldrick, i really like the bases on these guys, not sure how but it really makes them pop and really unified. As for the codex i see what you mean, but the arbites dread would push me over the edge, that would look so phenomenal.

I am enjoying this blog.

Good work and keep it up!

J-paint wrote:This stuff is awesome baldrick, i really like the bases on these guys, not sure how but it really makes them pop and really unified. As for the codex i see what you mean, but the arbites dread would push me over the edge, that would look so phenomenal.

Thanks a lot man. The idea of an arbites dread is sooo tempting I might just do it anyway for anytime I want to use the GK codex. I also wake up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat thinking about an arbites storm raven the idea of a giant flying "Patty Wagon" is awsome to me. However I was reading the Forge World updates the other day and saw that it allows Witch Hunters to take Valkyries as transports for Inquisitorial Storm Troopers and Inquisitors. Thats is also a tempting idea, because the Valkyrie can be used in two codex' IG and WH. Oh the endless codex struggle, the pains of playing a count as army.


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VikingScott wrote:I am enjoying this blog.

Good work and keep it up!

Thanks the compliments are much appreciated. I hope to get some more stuff done this week. I think on the work table is a dominion squad (judge w/storm bolter and 4 arbites w/meltaguns) and I might have a chimera finished this week as well. I will keep you guys posted. There may also be a battle report this week.

Update March 6th

Well I am hoping to get a game in this week so I had to finish an arbite dominion for my list. It’s a 6 man dominion squad one squad leader, 4 meltaguns, and a bolter armed model to take the first wound. I will add models to this squad later on to make it a full 10, but for right now 6 is all I needed.


Close up on the Judge. He turned out a little better than I expected. I do like the alternate pose.


Well that is all for now.

Welcome to the Dakka episode of Pimp my Ride. So I have wanted to give my Chief Justice (Inquisitor Lord) a transport more appropriate to his rank. So the other day I pick up the bits for this. Some may call it a land raider Prometheus, but to the Arbites it is known as “The Street Sweaper”.




Close up on the sensor array



I have loved the idea of this tank ever since I first saw it years ago. Though I have never been a fan of FW prices, I have been known to splurge on them from time to time. This time however I thought I could pull it off cheaper just buying bitz and converting. For this beauty I bought a land raider kit and some extra heavy bolters off of eBay. I also used some extra antenna bits from an IG set. I am really happy with how it turned out. The only thing I am leery on is the storm bolters. At first I tried to put them side by side where the back hatch is but it didn’t look right. So I figured they would be remote controlled any way so I put them up front in place of smoke launchers. The more I look at it the better it sits with me. Though I am thinking of making another for my Deathwing army, if I do I am thinking of putting them where the sensor array is. For now I am really pleased and can’t wait to get this into action and let it start stompin hippies and taken names I can really see this thing making ganers run for cover and clearing the streets of scum. Who can argue with 4 TL heavy bolters and 2 storm bolters, gotta love it 16 shots at 24 inches and 12 at 36 Against infantry and hoards I think it will be more productive than a crusader.





I think he fits into the family


Well that is all for now. I still need to finish a chimera and a repressor, and maybe another squad. We will see you never know how the week will go.

So a small update today March 21st.
Well after finishing the land raider for the Inquisitor lord I thought it was time to finish a chimera for the regular inquisitor. This thing was really beat up when I got it. It actually came free with another lot I bought at a convention, so I really can’t complain. The turret was scratched up and the sides had to be glued back on. One of the las-guns was snapped off, so I cut another one off on the other side to even it out. Now it only has 4 but looks better than 5. As you can see the vision port on the front, by the heavy bolter, has been removed. It was really mangled so I cut it out and replaced it with a cut down front door form an old rhino. The treds are a little off angle on the bottom, but I can't see that when its upright so it dosn't bother me too much. The turret is still really beat up if you look close, but I may replace it with a FW one at some point. I also added a few Imperial eagles to spruce it up some. In all I am pleased with how it turned out considering at first I thought it was destined to become scenery, and it was free. I have one more rhino and a repressor conversion to work on next then I think it is back to squads again. Well enjoy.

I followed your link here from ... somewhere ... and I have to say I love your Arbites. I've always wanted to make a small squad of shotgun IG Veterans as Arbites "on loan".

I can't wait to see your stuff all painted up! Good luck!

Thanks, after working on vehicles for a while I have been on a bit of a painting hiatus for a few weeks. I am hoping to get back to them this weekend. I think I will be working on a few units of bolter armed arbites to use as sisters.

Hello out there it is has been a while since I posted anything new. It has been crazy around my house over the past month between family and work. My free time has been minimal lately. What little time I have had I have been spending playing “Birth of the Federation”. So now that I have conquered the galaxy in the name of the Klingon Empire it is time to get back to business. I have also been watching a lot of Deep Space Nine, so please excuse me if I accidentally drift in to the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.

I want to get back into painting squads, but to get back into the zone I decided start with a rhino. This is an oldie. You can’t really tell from the painted model, but take a look at the front armor plate. It has a really cool eagle on it. This guy was so old it was not even grey plastic it was that Rouge Trader era harder cream colored plastic. It was a mess when I got it, but it cleans up nice.




Arbites rhino motor pool:


Now that I have blown the dust off of the painting table I decided to take advantage of the good weather and prime up a few squads to work on over the next few weeks. By combining my Dominions with what I had lying around I managed to squeak out 4 squads of bolter armed arbites. I will be using these guys for SOB whenever I need them in my lists.


I really like this Judge, his bolter looks a little rough in the photo but I think he will paint up nice.



Well that’s all for now, hopefully I can get a some work done these squads this week.

Hello out there Dakka fans, well its Mother’s Day her in the U.S. The kids are taking a nap and the wife is relaxing so I thought I would sneak away and post some of this week’s progress.


First up is a new unit, I finally got around to these guys. I find my painting goes in spurts I hope this is the beginning of one. I will be using them as SOB. 9 w/bolters including the squad leader and a heavy bolter. I liked how they turned out. At first I was skeptical on the Judge, but now that he is painted I am pleased. This is the first one down, and I have 4 units to go. In the end it will be 3 squads w/heavy bolter and 2 w/ 2 melta guns.


Close up on the Judge



I have also been working on some heads so I can convert other models into Arbites. At first these guys were just a test, because I don’t really use scouts in my SM army. Once they were done I was really please with them so I decided to use them. I attached some bits from SM backpacks to look like rocket packs so I will be using them as Seraphim. For now there are just 5 but I might add more in the future.












I am not even really sure why I did these guys, I already have 6 full squads of shotgun armed arbites, but they look cool anyway. I guess I could use them as Inquisitorial henchmen in a WH list or count them as lasgun armed guard in an IG list, their shotguns are a little punier looking than the rest of the arbites.



I kind of have too many projects going on with this army. I have another immolator started and another chimera. I also want to get more bolter armed squads finished. I have a few extra days off from work this week so I am hoping to get some more stuff done. My goal is to pain one squad and one small project (like a vehicle, character, or small unit) each week. I still have 2 squads with shot guns to paint but for now I am focusing on SOB units, I think I can field 3K painted for WH right now, but I am playing Arbites in a long term campaign and the other player has been bugging me to play a SOB WD list. So that is it for now, hopefully more to come.

Nice sculpts. Makes me wonder if a company like Chapterhouse could make money with something like "futuristic police force" helmets.

Looking good!

Good morning Dakka,
Well trying to stick to my painting goals I stay up last night after the family went to bed and finished another Immolator.




I am glad to see this poor guy put to some good use. I had this beat up rhino sitting around for a few years. I got it second or maybe third hand, from a friend. It never really fit into the Arbites army, as they were using the old style rhinos. I tried to put it to some good use as a make shift Repressor, but it never really sat well with me, and it wasn’t a really good conversion either.

Here are some shots of the repressor in my last battle report. As you can see it was just a rhino with some antennas and a heavy flamer stuck on, not really impressive. So I decided to give the old boy another make over and ordered some predator bits off of eBay and set to work.





I think it will see much better service this way. I had to pry off the old top door for the turret collar and hatches had to be changed as well. It is a little rough where I took off the heavy flamer I had on there, but not so much that you would notice from a distance. The fact that I use a really glossy black helps with that. If you look close you will also notice the new one only has one headlight. That is how I got it and I looked everywhere on eBay and nobody had just the headlight for sale, so it stayed that way. I don’t think it is really all that big of a deal, if you have ever had an up close look at any real police equipment you will notice a lot of it is rather abused looking anyway.




So now it is Monday morning and I hope to keep up this trend and finish some more projects this week.



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Anung Un Rama wrote:Nice sculpts. Makes me wonder if a company like Chapterhouse could make money with something like "futuristic police force" helmets.

Thanks for the compliment, but I wish my sculpting skills were that good. I prefer to work in mass production. I made this mold a few weeks ago and just pop in some more green stuff everyday.





After a week I have this to work with. It takes a bit of patience trimming, but is worth it.


Some of these heads are slated for these guys.


And these.


I also have some more plastic scouts around here with pistol & CC weapon to add to the Seraphim squad, but I am not sure where they are at the moment. They can’t hide long though.

Hello out there again,
Got some more work done last night. I finished another squad of bolter armed arbites. This squad is all made from the necromunda enforcers, 8 with bolters including the Judge and 2 with melta guns. This makes 2 down and 3 to go, for bolter squads.



Close up on the Judge.



Last night I also decided to change up my Landraider Prometheus a little. The placement of the storm bolters was driving me nuts. The more I looked at it the more I hated it.



Those storm bolters just sticking out like that, WHAT was I thinking? I must have been up late when I did that. Sleep deprivation can make you do dumb things. So being fed up with it I decided to correct this mistake. Since the Prometheus can have 2 storm bolters I thought it would look cool to make them hull mounted so I decided to attach them to the sensor array. Now making them hull mounted will limit the fire arch to front only, but it is much more visually pleasing. To me that’s worth it. So here it is.




I think that is much better. Much more stream line than the other way.

A close up on updated sensor array. All I really did was cut down the sides of the storm bolters and clue them together then I attached to the front of the array, I also moved the little radar dish to the top of the tank.


Well this is all I have for now, until next time.

Love the Pred to immolator conversion!

MrFlutterPie wrote:Love the Pred to immolator conversion!

Thanks, I needed an Immolator and I had this old predator sitting around and I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity and the idea just hit me I think it is much tougher looking than the sister’s version.

Well it’s update time. So I decided to finish another bolter unit this weekend instead of a smaller project, when you catch the painting bug just go with it. 3 bolter squads down and only 2 to go.

This unit is mostly the old Rogue Trader era Arbites. They are not my favorite models, but I have them and arbites are too pricy to let any sit aside. Originally in my WH list I was not really planning on using them. However for when I use them are SOB I need all the bolter armed arbites I can lay my hands on. For now they will stay in the unit they are in, but when I finish a few more units I might move them to the Retributor squad and keep all of the 2nd ed & Necromunda Arbites for regular battle sister squads. Maybe if I get a few more of them I might make them a Celestian squad due to the different style uniform. Personally I think they work well to represent Arbite cadets in field training.



Here is a close up on the Rogue Trader Arbites.


Close up on the Judge. He is nothing special, but I thought it would be a good idea to have at least one model armed with a bolt pistol.



This guy was actually saved from an eternity in the bitz box. He is a Rogue Trader era Judges body, with arms from SM scout and a head form IG cadians. All in all it is a nice save, and it is nice to have a few models that are different.


Originally he looked like this, but his power maul and helmet were donated to higher purposes and I think the person I got him from had already cut off the bolt pistol. I still have a few of these laying around un molested so it was ok to convert a few.


Here is a group shot of all of the bolter armed models finished to date. I threw in my retributor squad as well. I hope to have two more bolter armed units added to this soon.



So that is about it for today. I think I will try to get another unit done this week and my other Chimera, but we will see what happens. If I can find the time I might try to get a few shots of the entire army, I love finding excuses to line them all up on the table.
Catch you all later

So finally and update.
I have been doing a lot of painting and very little posting the past few weeks.
First up the seraphim squad. I like how they turned out, especially the green stuff cast heads. For now there is only 5, I may add more in the future.


Next is my completed bolter squads. There are 5 squads total 3 with melta guns and 2 with heavy bolters. These guys will be used for sisters of battle.


I also finished my other chimera. In addition to that I painted up some old hell hound turrets to put on them for use as repressors. I took a look at the FW repressor and its dimensions are not that far off of a chimera. When playing the SOB list the will make good stand-ins, rather than blowing money on FW.


My Eldar friend and I have finished our 3rd game and hope to have a 2500 point report up soon, some good pics coming. The pointy ears has been bugging me to play my arbites as SOB, so it was nice to see all of these additions put to use. More to come later.

Greetings all,
It has been a while since my last update. I took some time off to work on other projects and have been bitten by Arbite fever again. With 6th now here I will be using the army mostly as SOB with IG allies and on rare occasions IG with GK (Coteaz) allies. I haven’t had a chance to play any 6th games yet (family/work), but I am looking forward to all of those power mauls and allies.


For SOB I needed a Jacobus stand in and so started a week long rummage through the bitz bins.
This is what I came up with:




I wanted him to have all the correct wargear. Jacobus has a bolt pistol, chain sword, and the Redeemer shotgun (an AP 4 storm bolter). So my guy has a storm bolter, close combat weapon and if you look close there is pistol in the holster by the storm bolter. The thing that took the longest was the CC weapon. I didn’t want to give him anything that looked like the power mauls i use, but wanted something that looked like a symbol of a high Arbite officer. Finally after days of searching through bins in my basement I found the staff from the old metal steam tank engineer. The rest of the body is a metal Yarick with an old Arbite head. I also shaved down some plastic cadian shoulder pads.

At first I was only about 70% happy with it, but the more I look at it the more I like it. As soon as the rain stops around my way maybe I can get him painted. I would love to know what you all think.


A good friend of mine picked this up for me:



I think I will use him to stand in for either Celestine or Marbo. I would like to swap the head for one with a helmet of some kind, but I am not sure if I have any that will look right. FW heads are kind of smallish. I am also not sure what to do with the dog. I know a lot of people like it, but I think it is one of the ugliest models ever made by FW. I might give it back to my friend as a thank you, he keeps making comments about how much he likes it anyway.

I also thought you guys would like to see some group shots of what is done so far.
2 Battle Convlaves, Kyrinov stand in, 2 priests, 4 Battle Sister squads, 2 Dominion squads, Seraphim, Retributors, IG officer w/command squad, 4 Shotgun Vet Squads.



5 rhinos, 2 chimeras, 2 immolators, 2 exorcists, and a LR Prometheus.


I think Jacobus will be the focus of my time for now. I have a few more squads of arbites with shotguns to do plus some other random stuff. I might appropriate another chimera from my IG army though.
Well that’s it for now. Comments welcome

If you need to flesh out anymore of your units, void 1:1 junkers make great arbites and can be picked up on the cheap.

Freaking love the full army shot

Great progress, and fantastic full army shot. Is that Jacobus based on a Commissar body? Looks good.

My Arbites fell by the wayside a little as summer got really busy, but I'm hoping to pick them up again in the next few months - I think you're right that some combination of SoB and IG is the best way to go, but I'm not sure how to reconcile that half my army have MAGICAL POWERS and the other half don't!!

 Oakenshield wrote:
If you need to flesh out anymore of your units, void 1:1 junkers make great arbites and can be picked up on the cheap.

I have seen the Junkers they are really cool, but I am doing ok for units right now. I still have 2 more units of shotgun arbites left to paint, plus another made from metal scouts with head swaps. That would give me 7 total which I think is enough for now. However there are two Junkers in trench coats called Enforcers that I would love to have for characters. I keep searching eBay for them, but they are hard to find.

Thanks though


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 MrFlutterPie wrote:
Freaking love the full army shot

Thanks,
I hope to add to it over the next month, but we also have pee-wee soccer starting too, so that will take up some time.


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 ArbitorIan wrote:
Great progress, and fantastic full army shot. Is that Jacobus based on a Commissar body? Looks good.

My Arbites fell by the wayside a little as summer got really busy, but I'm hoping to pick them up again in the next few months - I think you're right that some combination of SoB and IG is the best way to go, but I'm not sure how to reconcile that half my army have MAGICAL POWERS and the other half don't!!

Thanks,
Yes the Jacobus is based off of Commissar Yarick. I am still not 100% happy with him though. I was thinking about it earlier today and I think it is because he is so thin. All of the Arbites are kind of square and bulky because of the armour. I will paint him up and then see how I feel about it then.

The “magic powers” of the SOB don’t bother me as much as having to explain to a new opponent “ok all of these guys have a 3+ save and all of these guys that look just like them with shotguns have a 4+”. That’s why I have toyed with the idea of IG with GK (Coteaz) allies and just use warrior henchmen with carapace armour and bolters. Though either way I am happy 6th allows me to field them together.

PS
I can’t wait to see your Arbites back in action you have some great looking models there and I love those battle reports.