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Edit: Well I'm ressurecting this old blog of mine as a general art blog for me and my minis. Feel free to surf through the existing content as you will, but I'll begin posting new content after the second page or so. Catch y'all later.

Hey all.

I've finally gotten around to scrounging a camera (albeit a rather naff one) and decided to post the fruits of my labour (ok the stuff I make when my internet's down if you want to put it like that). Anyhow this here is the start to a blog about my Imperial Guard regiment, the 42nd Pargae'yn Patthak Besieger Squadron (oh don't we like big sparkly titles?), and I'll be updating it with whatever the next piece of craziness I come up with next. ^^

Background wise the Pargae'yns are a siege regiment. They field a wide range of tanks and artillery from a variety of sources- ranging from their own rugged battle tanks and transports built for the regiment's founding, to local PDF scrapheaps scrounged when there was little other option-, with troops providing assistance via work as engineers, sappers and good old meat shields-more on the former PDF recruits later. Aside for being an almost completely mechanzised regiment, the 42nd also are outfitted to operate in a variety of hostile inviroments (mostly chemical and toxic hazards), with each trooper being equipted with one of a number of varieties of gasmasks/hoods and rebreathers, and a standard issue airtight bodysuit worn under their fatigues.

Anyhow... Here's my attempt at a guard army.

A basic engineer with shotgun, converted from a Tau Fire Warrior.





And another engineer, this time with a meltagun. =P





And on the tank side...

First up my latest work, the humble Griffon. Don't ask why there's random Hebrew on the side...







Based off of a real world design which origin is unknown to me I'm intending to make this thing modular so as it may be counted as either a Griffon, Chimera, Deathstrike and possibly a Manticore in games by alternating the top hatch (open, close, a communications array and missiles respectively). Other than that its still a major WIP, but I just thought I'd open with my favorite tank anyway. ^^

Next on my list of alternative tanks is my count as Collossus, the Goliath Siege Walker (so called because in my concept for its base there's a little PDF trooper being mulched by its foot called David).







Admitely it wouldn't be able to fire its main weapon and remain standing, but...I flunked Pysics, so its allowable.

I got the idea for this Hellhound variant from here on Dakka, but I think I've modified the original concept enough to call dibs on this one. =)







It may be a bit difficult to notice, but the stuff on the sides is Zimmerit. Why have Zimmerit in a universe of laser beams and hand held automatic RPG's well.......err....its Ceramite Plating....Guard used to get that right? It can be used as an of the three hellhound variants by changing the turret's barrel (where the two out of place tubes end). ...I dislike having a tanks that are rarely used, so I make them so they can be used as more common vehicles as well. (What?....I'm a bit of a cheapskate)

I'll save the rest for further posts as this one's got enough image spam in it already. If you want to get alterative shots of the tanks in this post then check out my gallery page. More nonsence pending.

Bit of a strange style you got going on there but i really like the soldiers, tho i can't precisely say whu! Are they sposed to be caked in mud?

How did you paint those?

Heh, mud? You haven't seen my tanks yet (ok I may have gone overboard on some of them, but youknow...). Yeah, I like mud, but I see it as there's a million million worlds or some such, thus the consistancy of the ground will be different on each planet. Anyhow, the world that they're currently meant to be fighting on was once a fortress world, but the war's gone on for so long that all but te most fortified posistions have been reduced to a quagmire of broken steel and rubble-it didn't help that the area that they're fighting in was the world's major naval port and surrounded by marshland either though). Its only my regulars that are caked in mud though; my carapace vets and command platoon have a slightly different basing style (more urban rubble and steampunkish factory ruins respectively).

Most of them aren't painted, or if they are its just to work out the schemes. I'm a rather sketchy painter when it comes down to it anyhow. I just give them an undercoat of chaos black, apply the general colour to each area then build up each area with sucessive coats of drybrushing (man I love drybrushing). Its quick and simple, and gives your army that nice dirty (half-assed) look. I could give you a more in dept answer, but that would make it seem as though I actually know how to paint. Anyhow, they do look a bit better in real life, I just suck at taking pictures with a terrible camera. ^^

Here's my engineer's Chimera count as. The top looks a little funky because its meant to be modular-ie the heavy flamer and rear hatch are both removable and can be replaced with either another turret weapon, or the hatch with a Quantum Gothic Missile launcher to make the vehicle into a Manticore). The thing on the back's a heavy stubber, and yeah...if you don't notice it...I haven't really gotten around to properally painting this thing either (bloody social life).

Interesting whats the Griffon based on a kit or scratchbuild?

The only parts that are out of a GW kit or otherwise is the top part of the rear cab-which is off the Chimera, and was left over from a Thunderer conversion-, the tracks and some of the details (notably the mortar's made out of an autocannon and a grenade launcher, tutorial found here). The rest is plasticard. Here's the source image, don't for the life of me know its designation. Yeah, I know its not perfect, but the shots I originally had to work with were less than perfect (what the feth is that thing?). ^^

this is so grim dark, theres something about it, its like, they are super crisp pain jobs, but they seem more realistic and desperate, 10 out of 10 mate

Heh, my paint jobs suck to hell on the miniatures I've posted, but yeah, woot grimdark! Anyhow, yeah, my guys are actually probably less grimdark than most guard armies. Its M32 (? keep forgetting0 so the Imperial Faith hasn't fully established itself on all human worlds like it has in the 41st millenium (that all happens circa M35, anyhow this is the border worlds), so they don't worship the Emperor quite so much- thus to hell with purity seals and giant aquilas on every surface, and their "priests" are few and far between and wear longcoats and uniforms...not unlike Commissars. Sure they may be stuck fighting a war of attrition against their own kind against rebels on some fortress world somewhere, but they're not the Death Korps. They have the sence to make sure their enemy's suffiently dead enough by blowing them up with artillery before sending the troops in (in comparison to sending the troops in then blowing the place up with artillery) too. The first Pargae'yn regiments were formed just after the end of a planetry civil war on their home planet (Patthak was the designation of the winning side for its military forces), when the Imperial showed up in a timely fashion to reclaim the world and domand fealty. But that's not grimdark enough so....

Fast forward 7,000 years to the 39th millenium however, and Pargaea's a floating husk of a planet, devastated by exterminatus after a the locals had a bit of a tiff with the Imperium over food exportation rates (no those grox steaks aren't for your starving people. Those are for the Emperor's soldiers!) which soon escalated...

Oh and the last part's a bit of a cop out to explain why my army's fighting other Imperial forces all the time. ...If you can count Angry Marines as loyal.

i must agree with all respect yur painting is so bad its fantastic

Heh, you should see when I use my tank brush! Yeah, but in all seriousness....I may only have two paint brushes to my name. "Pointy" -the eight hair "detail brush"-, and what I'm guessing used to be a Citadel standard sized brush...but its been used for so long that its hardly worth using for anything but a good old drybrushing (and it sucks at that too). Hmn...I really ought to stop spending all my money on junk.

aha no worries mate, i have 4 pinty, standard, wash, dry brush

who's paints do you use ?

Mostly Citadel actually. I used MP miniatures paints for base coats usally-their black and Earth Brown is so much cheaper than Citadel's-, but everything else is secondhand GW. I don't wash (...). I don't thin my paints. No Inks, but the occasional bit of gloss varnish for water effects. I just drybrush the hell out of everything and call it a day-I'm mush more into modelling. Oh yeah, and I'm not one for painting elsewhere either, its only ever used alongside other media (pencils usually...I don't like complicating things). So yeah....cheap and easy. Sketchiness is best. ^^

Update, here's my Thunderer. Scratchbuilt out of a spare Leman Russ kit and the top of a Chimera (just the way Forgeworld made theirs) The basic build's pretty much finished (bar a bit of work on the demolisher cannon), all that's left before painting is stowage I guess unless anyone can venture anything else.





Youch terrible greenstuff work.

I'll see whatever other WIPs I can drag up for my army later in the day (I think there's a Lascannon artillery piece sitting around somewhere), till then what do y'all think? ^^

Looking for paintbrushes head into Wilkinsons about 25 for £3 and they are reasonable quality....

Oh yeah, I know where to get them sure enough...I just have more pressing things to spend my cash on right now. Nevermind, I'm owed a load of money by my wargaming club, so I should be able to get a hold of decent ones in the near future (don't expect my painting skills to improve however).

Also, I'll be starting up a sister blog to this one detailing my foray's into Mordheim with my motly band of cuthroats and yocals (who's only reason for not cutting one another's throats is that they're being payed more to cut their enemy's). I can't get a hold of my camera right now...and the alternative, albeit apparently better one is....too complicated, so I'll be posting it and probably more pics for this one tomorrow sometime. ^^'

Oh has it been a while? Thought that I may as well update this page with some of my older images of some conversions that I had on my hardrive from the original shoot. I've not forgotten this blog...thingy... or wargaming, just allowed them to take a back seat for a while.

A shortlist of my current projects for the army are:

* A Leman Russ Exterimator based (vaguely) on the German Tiger tank (though till I can get hold of some more greenstuff this is on hold for the moment)

* The "Arna" pattern Leman Russ Battletank featured earlier. Its came along a good way since I last posted it here, with a new paintjob, larger turret (though I still think its rather titchy) and stowage....lots of stowage-really not to have based that element on how the American's do it with their M1 Abrams. ^^

* A company command squad. All wearing carapace armour, with gas masks and enough kit to last them a nuclear winter. For the most part the modelling on these guys (and gals) is done, though I'm still undecided about what to include as their special weapon...probably a bad ass flamer. Sketch of original concept and below. =)



*A ton of Carapace vets (...ok 30). Based off of the Panzer cops from the Kereboros series, they're originally plastic cadians but with a fething load of greenstuff on each one. Below's a (terrible) shot of one of them armed with a count as plasma gun (a rocket rifle...and not a grenade launcher in any way ¬¬) and another that counts as a Autocannon gunner (the heavy armour infers the two wounds...don't ask about the lasgun).







Hopefully some newer shot'sll be of a higher quality eh? See what I can do abut that soon. ^^

Cant say im a big fan of the paint style but man you can model!!!

The infantry looks a hell of a lot better in real life...can't say so much about the tank's that I posted here, but none of them are finished yet (god to I hate painting large surfaces, thus...stowage! ^^). I've a rather sketchy painting style and it doesn't always transfer too well onto models. =)

The conversions are impressive , also like your paint style. Reminds me of my own actually. I bet your models look fab on the table . You look like you paint the whole thing in one go , and treat it like a canvas, out of the three , my fave is the engineers chimera, i like the variation in colour , not sold on the drybrushing of the hellhound though.

The concept art is great , as are your models . interesting stuff here , i would quite like to see you tighten up your style in some areas like having different colours for the weapons or to add stronger individual colours here and there to separate the mud from the machine , but overall i think you have pretty funky style and very creative.

On reflection i think your work is bold and daring and would suit itself to standing withing a wider diorama , so as to contextualize the models to their surroundings.

Tah for the advice neil101. Yeah, the muds on the vehicles didn't really stand out that much (I was trying to use the same tecnique that I used for my bases...but it didn't work out quite so well), but they look better now with a repaint. I'm now using a paint scheme based on the old Mk.V tank's used by the British at the Somme instead, just a pitty the rust doesn't stick out so much with all the hues of brown.

The Hellohound looks rather silly because well...it wasn't really painted, I just gave it a base coat and drybrush like I do with every model before I work on it so as I can see what I'm doing. ...It still isn't painted though (still need a bloody barrel for that thing's turret ¬¬). As for the weapons on the troopers I just decided to paint every one of them in a nondescript metal for...err...realism, hinting at mass production, and...laziness. Hey if they all look like one solid mass of trashy, muddy miniatures on the tabletop then they may well at least look a little uniformed and fit in with their fluff. ^^

Fluffly times now.

The tank's in my army are meant to have a certain look of obsoleteness to them. The Russ is plodding about with way too much armour on its rear and a turret that probably wasn't part of its original design (perhaps one found on some similar prototype schematics, or just the only one that they had to hand). The transport vehicles either have insuficient acess point, or have them in silly places-like right at the front like some sort of landing craft. Few have firepoints other than their top hatches unlike the guard stand chimera with all its hull mounted lasguns. As for all the vehicles in general: they're all riveted to hell now, have numerous pieces of makeshift armour plating (hinting at how terrible some of the original armour is and obvious weak points in certain areas-ie the base of the turret cupola on both the tanks and the walkers), are rusted to hell, use obsolete equiptment and tecniques (ie zimmerit) and in contrast to other Guard tanks have a right hand drive system...because I felt like being awkward.

The tank designs are all over the place for various reasons. For one its just because I get distracted and like making random models on the fly, but for fluff reasons it could be that they're replacements contracted from local PDF garrisons, armouries or just looted from the battlefield. However another point is that whilst the regiment is merrily fighting its way across the galaxy, due to the irregularity of warp travel, x amount of years may have passed on their homeworld, thus the tank's of the army representing hundreds of years of one world's culture (Bit like War and Peach ^^).

Oh I do like to waffle don't I? =)

the tank designs are cool. I painted up a MkV using Mr scratchmods rust guides which are excellent.

http://scratchmod.com/Destroyed_Iraqi_T55.php




look forward to seeing more art and fluff too.

Been a while...

Updates!

Here's some of my basic infantry. In games they'll be guardsmen with lasguns.



And this fella's a trooper with a flamer from one of my wip special weapons squad (two flamers + demo-charge)


Moving on here's the my infantry platoon's lieutenant with a count as power fist (or for anyone who's Fallout: New Vegas a ballistic fist)

Yes that is a chocolate penny. ^^


And this is the point when my sister came into the room...

And fluff updates.

Pargaea is an arid world located to the galatic north of terra within the Segmentum Obscurus. The majority of Pargaea's surface is covered by cold deserts and mountain ranges, with the only areas fit for agriculture being located along a thin band that borders the equator. The majority of the planet's population live in settlements bordering whichever water sources are available. Buildings in the arid regions are traditionally made of a hard packed mud and are commonly at least in part underground, whilst in the mountains the settlements tend to be made up of expansive networks of dwellings dug directly into the rock faces. Agriculture on the planet is mainly tied to the harvesting of an algae that grows across the desert's floor (and is processed and exported to become a predoment part of the nutrient gruel eaten by local military forces and factory workers) as the high salt content found within the soil and oceans has led to little else being able to grow in sufficiently. Instead bacteria is harvested from the atmosphere and from the oceans floors for export and these are used throughout the chemicals industry. A single spaceport is located on a large island off the coast of the planet's capital, Landing; though the region can only be acessed for half of the year due to harsh sandstorms that buffer the planet for manly of the summer months.

After a series of civil wars that lasted almost contionously for a period of almost forty years Pargaea was colonised by the Imperium. One of their first declarations was to establish a tithing system and within the year three guard regiments were founded...

Oh and on that note the regiment is now the 3rd/42nd Pargae'yn Patthak Besiegers; formed from the 3rd Pargae'yn Besiegers and 42nd Kelsin Royal Armoured Infantry (if I hadn't mentioned it already). Patthak is the bastardisation of the Pargae'yn phrase Phant'tak that describes an amalgamated force. ...Yes my army doesn't speak gothic. ^^

More shiz... ^^

A pair of shots of my WIP carapace vets that are styled after the Panzer Cops from the Kereboros series. I'm planning to have thrity of these guys in my 1500pts list, but converting them can be pretty draining after a while so I've wound up making about a couple a month at the best of times. The painted ones were the original test minis, thus they're a bit crude. =/





Like I said earlier these guys are froma different regiment that the desert worlders. They're a heavy infantry regiment raised from the world of Keladria (which though classed as "Civilised" by the Imperium, it would be classed as a Fascist state in today's terms) which located some lightyears away from the border world of Pargea. The two regiments were reconstructed together during the sixth year into the 3rd's career after both suffered heavy losses during a prolonged campaign against the rebelling fortress worlds of the Zhu'Ansi sector.

I like your style, nice stuff. Some of the pictures are a bit hard to make out the detail however (on my laptop, it maybe me opps).

It's a bit hard to make out the details at times. Possibly due to your paintscheme being very drab, which is not a bad thing but maybe something to consider. Do you water down your paints? They look a bit thick.

I love your conversions actually. They are pretty seamless. Well done. I also love your concept sketch. It's really great! Sort of what I want to achieve with my own guardsmen. The post apoc look.
Keep it up!

Yeah the paint scheme's fairly basic, but I don't really have the consentration to put much effort into it though-all about the converting. I basically just paint the main colours where I want them (cream cloth, red scarves, brown pouces) then just give everything alternating dry brushes of various browns. That way these guys take like twenty minutes top to paint. ...Yeah, I've put off painting my favorite models because I don't really want to inflict the horror of one of my paintjobs on them...yet.


Lascannon -note the two circles at the rear of the gun where the crew will be placed. I'm split between using basic troopers (with stripped down uniforms) as crew or a pair of Ad Mech scribes from Blight Wheel miniatures that I have sitting idle (bought to be used as tech servitor for my Enginseer)?


Lascannon with gunner...

A very wip Banesword for my guard. Those white bits on the site are to be the supports for some racks for stowage, but I can't seem to find the right type of grill for them. For some reason its ended up looking a bit like a Stug (GW really aren't that imaginative with their Guard tank designs). It'll probably wind up with spaced armour on either side of its hull like the Stug too (made out of a mesh of some sort)



A Shadowsword based off of a conversion that I saw on Deviant Art. Yes this is also wip (I'm in no mood to rivet this thing at the moment ^^). I thought that the superstructure for the main gun wasn't nearly large enough for it and, as with the banesword, enlarged it. Though with this one I choose to stick the gun in its original mounting place rather than further forward and extend the super structure back over the tank's rear a bit like a T-28 to distinguish the two apart from one another on the tabletop. I'm considering also giving the gun a mounting on the front of the hull too, like the Epic models, but haven't got thick enough plasticard available at my local art stores for the task. =/



Oh and those blood airials are hellish. The Shadowsword had both of them broken off in one day and the Banesword had one broken post assembly. ¬¬

I'm considering adding Airial recognition stripes to each of these, though I'm split between going for the Russian style (just a big cross), a stylised Aquila, or my own Army's symbol for its tanks (which may just confused your average Imperial spotter, though I don't know if its standard practice for spotters to know the major symbols of regiments in the field or not).

Images!

.......Right.=/

Earlier on this blog I posted some wip shops of a Thunderer and Leman Russ Battle tank. Well its been a few monthes since then and well here's where I've gotten with them.





Well...heh.... as you can see not exactly very far. The modelling sides of things is now complete on both othem. The turret on the leman russ is now roughly 2/5th larger than the original one and has enough stowage to make an M1 Abrams crewman feel as though they're only going out for a day trip. Admitedly the paint schemes on both of them are fairly crude. Now yeah, they are, and they were originally only tests to see how each of my tanks would look like lined up on the gaming table, but I guess that they won't be recieving any more of a repaint due to time constraints. No, I'll do my best to get the pair finished by the end of Febuary (yes this is a short time scale for me) in the same paint scheme (though hell, with thinner paint).

You'll probably not notice this, but between the building of these two tanks my concept for the army changed a little. With the Thunderer the army had had very influence placed upon it by the Imperium, but by the time I was finishing the Russ I'd decided now that seeing as they're a veteran regiment, the Imperial church will have slowly influenced their beliefs. Now I've included little bits of scripture and symbols of the Imperial creed on my tanks and troops (if only to put off people say that they "look a bit chaosy"). However the church isn't quite what it is in the 41st Millenium, especially so seeing as my army's from the fringes of the Imperium and these are soldiers, not fanatics, so I don't really want to go overboard with all the incography.

Also last night, whilst watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off (....what?), I decided to work out some concepts of what the soldiers in my army look like. At the moment they seem to have been alternating between the look of Arab militiamen and the Norts from the 2000AD series Rogue Trooper. But yeah, what I've worked out so far is that they're more of the former, but with the uniformity and enviromental suits from the later. Hey, but at least now that I have a solid design concept I can start churning these guys out faster. I'll post up some of it later in the week when I can be bothered finding me scanner.

Till then, enough of my blethering. Ciao folks. ^^

This here was a concept model for a Marbo count as. A sort of ninjaish forward scout for situations where recon vehicles would be untelible. Since then the concept of the army has changed to make this idea a bit conflicting, but I've not really came up with anything better since, so this lil' lady'll be keeping in my army for now.



Aside from Guard I used to play Tau. I happened to find this fella whilst going through my bits boxes before taking the latest blog pictures. Its the shas'el (?) from a tau jetbike squad, or a count as vesbid to your average gamer. I think the idea came from some Tau forum, but really it was just an exscuse to use up some bits and add another scout unit to my swamp fighting Tau. ^^


Hell four concecutive posts and no comments? Kids these days. ^^

You have made great progress , i love your guards men nearly as much as i love your sisters doll ;-) , the tau conversions are cool. Nice weathering on your lascannon too.