Guess nobody cares about Tau snipers, lol.

How about Steel Legion Ogryns?



I was excited to do some Ogryns. The new kit looked great, and looked like it had a ton of options.

Wrong!

The kit is a beautiful mess. The Ogryns are wonderfully sculpted, but each individual Ogryn is letter coded A, B and C, and will only fit together "properly" if you stick to the correspondingly lettered parts. Look at the outside of the box. What you see is what your ogryns will look like if you assemble them properly.

As if. We're doing these guys my way.

I'd always intended to cut off the hanging tank treads because I think they look silly. Turns out it wasn't an option. They'll only fit on the model if you use the Bullgryn arms. So I mixed and matched the arms to get poses I liked. This leaves all kinds of putty-filled gaps, but such is the price of freedom.

I was able to get two vicious-looking Ogryns with their weapons leveled to lay waste to some unlucky heretics or xeno-scum. But that left me with one more Ogryn to assemble and the two least desirable arms, lol. I'm thinking I may bite the bullet and buy another arm for this guy (one of the power mauls). But in the mean time, I swapped the ripper gun to his left hand and gave him one of the Ork choppas as a knife. "Dat's not a nife. Dis is a nife!"

Here's the Bone 'Ead. I made sure he was the tallest of the bunch. Next to one of the tallest of my Space Marines.



Then I realized that while I had saved a bunch of money by purchasing the Ogryns in bits (only buying the parts I needed), I had no bases for them. So these two beat up a Crisis Suit and stole his (already broken) flight stand base.



As a group.


Honestly I kinda want to do some more of these guys. There's something about Ogryns I really like. And something I really like about Steel Legion Ogryns. I would even do them up as really expensive props. Just to have them loading cargo or hauling off prisoners or something.

Man Sarge, your work to convert everything is AWESOME! Love the new Ogryns and the poses you gave them. As for the Tau snipers, they look great. You got the Sniper team look down pat on them. Now paint them up and base them. Hell paint something up or the GRAY TIDE will get to you.

Tau look like Tau. Don't really know enough about them to say more. Guess that is a good thing though, they still look like they could be intended poses. Speaks highly of the modifications.

I agree the tank treads are silly. Seems very Orkish to me. Your solution is better.

One of the problems with tau FWs and Crisis suits is that they are pretty old models, never been updated AFAIK.

 whalemusic360 wrote:
Tau look like Tau.

I guess that's fairly true, lol. The Pathfinder snipers are really the only Tau unit I've really been pleased with.

I agree the tank treads are silly.

Just seemed like dangling tank treads are a good way to get whacked in your Ogryn junk.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
One of the problems with tau FWs and Crisis suits is that they are pretty old models, never been updated AFAIK.

Absolutely. Though I really feel like the Crisis suits had so much more potential that was wasted by a poor kit design. While I think my disappointment with the Fire Warriors stems from just how versatile the Space Marines kit is. The Chaos Marines kit is old, but you can get a lot out of it with some work. Its only problem is being hideously ugly, with parts I hate like giant horned helmets and belt-fed bolters (you'd need three arms to load it properly on the fly, lol. Which might not always be a problem for Chaos Marines, all of the ones in the kit are two-armed).

Like your work matey !
The Ogryns and orcs look spot on to me , even the "head up " orks !
Why Tau tho ? Gotta be better things to spend time on than them ?

Why Tau?

Gotta have something for my heroic Spess Mahreens and Guardsmen to kill.

Plus, honestly I hadn't had any inspiration to make more Marines for months. They're a lot of work, which usually leaves my fingers and back sore at the end, and I have one or maybe two figures to show for it, lol. The relatively "low" effort of converting the Orks and Tau has been somewhat refreshing, heh. There's a bit more "cleanup" needed for them in terms of putty, but that's ridiculously easy compared to cutting and filing card sections down. Like I've said, and it's no joke, the Space Marines are literally about 40 parts each, about 34 of which are modified in some way. A Tactical Marine with a bolter consists of: 7-8 parts for the arms, 3 for the bolters, 11 parts for the legs, 5-6 for the torsos, head, pack, knife, 2 pauldrons, 8 individual accessory parts. I split all the pouches and grenades apart so they sit on the madel better, etc.



And I've always loved the Orks and wanted to do my own take on them. I just need to stop buying them. It too easy to get good deals on EBay, lol. I have more Orks than I'll probably need at this point.

Eventually I will get back to my Space Marines. I was working on a long-overdue Apothecary before I packed them up. Had been modifying the Narthecium to be a bit more practical looking. I want to do 2 or 3 Apothecary models in the long run. But I want them to look like Marines first, and medics second, and the base models don't really do that very well.

Slight problem for you...

If your making everything to trustable, how are you going to solve the tau problem? By that I mean the sizing for races are as follows:

Tau 4'5
Guard 5'10
Eldar 7'
Space marines 8'

These are average sizes mind, but racial sizes non the less.

Have you considered shortening tau at all, if so how?

Tau aren't supposed to be that short, just slightly shorter (5'6" compared to 6'). And I don't think that fluff is even in any of the more recent books.

Man gotta also love that GW shortened the SM again to 7 feet

I think that those scales, the difference between 1feet is gonna be fairly hard to see anyway.

I see that putting the 1.5 mm card in at the waist has the added advantage of allowing adequate space for pistols and pouches, knives etc. I find the waist / belt on an unmodified marine isn't deep enough I end up having to file down some of the bigger pieces of equipment to make them fit.

Like I've mentioned before, I work on the Jes Goodwin school of Space Marine heights. So 7-7.5ft. I'm not a huge fan of some of the Black Library authors' insistence on growing these guys. It silly, and worse, impractical, for them to be too much bigger.

https://veteransergeant.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/how-tall-is-a-space-marine/



I feel my scale captures this fairly well, leaving them just over a head taller than the average man. And it keeps them in proper proportions. Bulkier, but with the correct length legs and arms

I see that putting the 1.5 mm card in at the waist has the added advantage of allowing adequate space for pistols and pouches, knives etc. I find the waist / belt on an unmodified marine isn't deep enough I end up having to file down some of the bigger pieces of equipment to make them fit.

Absolutely. A millimeter goes a long way at this scale, lol. I file the magazine pouches down slightly too though. Mostly to give them a more rounded and organic feel.

As far as shortening the Tau, lol, no. Not going to happen. I don't know where your 4.5' number comes from anyway. I've never seen that. Just that they're slightly smaller and slighter than the average man. I feel like the basic model captures that well enough. I'll put one next to Mr. Cadian when I get a chance and show the scale comparison.

 Desubot wrote:
Man gotta also love that GW shortened the SM again to 7 feet

I think that those scales, the difference between 1feet is gonna be fairly hard to see anyway.

GW's marketing/promotions/beancounter department did - for the sake of this one contest!

Other than that, I think we're safe to go with Marines in Armor that are 2.5 meters +!

I don't go anywhere near as I depth as you veteran sergeant , but buy adding a mil or two at the waist I get a pleasing bit of height and leave enough room for pouches and sidearms. I split all the mags and grenades and file them so they sit naturally. Removing some of the belt often helps too. Marines are as small as my eyes can comfortably work with these days ! I have a big bag of parts ready for a Chaos marine fest coming in the summer !
Good look with the Tau !

I love the Tau Snipers, and what you've done with the Ogryns
It's a shame that a lot GW kits seem to be heading in this direction, where you have to build them one way.

Doesn't stop us from cutting them up and building them how we want, it just makes it a little trickier,
and harder for people to get into converting, which is my favorite part of the hobby.

I've been following this blog on again and off again for some time now. I love all the work you put into these guys. Amazing stuff!

Sarge I don't know if you're aware of the excellent gun mods / belt accessories stocked by Anvil Industries. http://www.anvilindustry.co.uk/The-Armoury/Ammo Some superb stuff there like foregrips, reflex sights, under-barrel grenade launchers and bandoliers. Also their ammo pouches are smaller in scale than the GW ones, and easier to fit comfortably on a marine. They've saved me days of scratch building.

I've looked at Anvil before but I don't feel like they have anything ideal for my project, to be honest. I don't like exposed rounds at 28mm, because ultimately they end up oversized. And a lot of their other stuff looks too modern. If I do scouts I might use their foregrips to make cut down shorty bolters.

 SNxWMxN wrote:
I've been following this blog on again and off again for some time now. I love all the work you put into these guys. Amazing stuff!

Thanks. I'm glad you liked it and I'm honored to be 1/6th of your total posts.

Realized I'd never shared my blades on the forum. I wanted to give the Marines more of a classic Roman feel. The shorter gladius-style blade means I can have Sergeants without having the giant melee weapons, and the knives, while fine, are a bit more machete-like, and I thought I could have fun replacing them.


Based on this:


The gladius-sized weapon used a High Elf Archer Command blade. The smaller pugio/mini-gladius uses the speartip from High Elf Spearmen mated to the Space Marine knife hilt, with the handle shifted over to the center of the weapon.

A lot of work for something that just gets left on the Marine's back on most models, lol. But I recently got another big bag of those High Elf spears for super cheap.

Seems like almost *everything* is better in Steel Legion flavor.

The tau and Orks look good too. I can't really do GW orks, the hunchiness is unpalatable. Your work makes them a bit easier to handle, though I don't think I could get myself to do the same thing. I'd sooner buy a bunch of Deadzone Marauder commandos than convert like you are, but that seems to be your thing and you're damn good at it so keep it up

It's actually not that bad really. Though if you had to do a hundred or so for a full sized Ork army it might get tiresome, lol. I'm only doing like 500 points worth.

But the legs cut real easily. Then it's just a matter of rotating the groin so the legs stand taller, then filing down the excess and using a bit of putty/liquid green stuff to fill the gaps. The head needs a bit more work.

I do like the Maruaders from Mantic. I actually ordered a few. But they're not prevalent on Ebay, which makes them a larger monetary investment than GW Orks which can be gotten on Ebay for cheap in bulk (I think I pay about $1.50 average per boy) if you're patient and look for deals. My problem is I look too hard for deals, and then I end up with more stuff than I need, heh. The Mantic models, even though I snagged a decent deal on them, cost almost twice that just because there aren't a bajillion of them in circulation like the GW orks.

As soon as my Marauders show up I'll post a size comparison.

Sweet, that would be interesting. I'm really crossing my fingers for a good hard plastic Marauder kit once Warpath hits kickstarter... someday. Or maybe even in the next Deadzone kickstarter.. though that's been held back too (not really a bad thing).

I guess one thing to be said for marauders is that they're made of restic and have limited poses. And cutting restic is both difficult and dangerous lol, if you haven't dealt with it before you probably won't like it given how much you tend to hack and saw things! If you've ever changed a pose on a metal model... more like that.

Yeah, I did some metal model conversions back in the old, old days. It's time consuming and hard work, for sure. I only ever did it on character models. I'm guessing I won't do much to the Marauder models other than to 40Kify them a little so they blend in. I was just kind of curious to see them.

Having extra ork arms around may let you do some reasonable converting, it's just that they have kind of military skirt/tunic things so it'll be hard to do much changing of the legs... Although you do have a convenient skirt/tunic thing to cover/hide certain changes in leg position...

At least they aren't horribly hunched over, they've kind of got the whole 'neck sticks out of torso at slightly better than a right angle (instead of up =/) but they work it.

 Big H wrote:
Like your work matey !
The Ogryns and orcs look spot on to me , even the "head up " orks !
Why Tau tho ? Gotta be better things to spend time on than them ?

because they're an awesome army?

 GrimDork wrote:
Having extra ork arms around may let you do some reasonable converting, it's just that they have kind of military skirt/tunic things so it'll be hard to do much changing of the legs... Although you do have a convenient skirt/tunic thing to cover/hide certain changes in leg position...

At least they aren't horribly hunched over, they've kind of got the whole 'neck sticks out of torso at slightly better than a right angle (instead of up =/) but they work it.

I actually kinda like the tunic thing. I have some extra AoBR bodies sitting around I don't plan to use (they came in a lot I picked up on EBay) I can cut the legs off if the Marauder legs look too spindly. Then I can just trim them down to the right length and glue them on.

I've been plugging away at some more Orks. Up to 30 finished now, though I took a week and a half off because work was busy. Still trying to convince myself to drop another $40-50 on those Kromlech heads, but haven't been successful yet, lol.

Honestly, I'm curious about how you'd approach
'modernizing' a Tau battlesuit - I think something Farsight Enclaves would be right up your alley (and would make good enemies for your Orks )

I haven't given much thought to the Battlesuits aside from giving them proper hands and more dynamic arms. I was a fan of Heavy Gear when I was much younger, and always thought the Tau suits would be so much cooler if they went that direction. I have three of them (including the one I posted before). Two need some TLC and restoration, but hopefully I can make something out of them. After that, I'll probably pick up a Commander and a Broadside, and that will be about it for me for Tau. I've already got stealth suits, FW, Pathfinders and Kroot. The finecast/metal Kroot stuff goes for too much money to justify the cost (which is sad because I kinda like the kroothounds).

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 GrimDork wrote:
Having extra ork arms around may let you do some reasonable converting, it's just that they have kind of military skirt/tunic things so it'll be hard to do much changing of the legs... Although you do have a convenient skirt/tunic thing to cover/hide certain changes in leg position...

At least they aren't horribly hunched over, they've kind of got the whole 'neck sticks out of torso at slightly better than a right angle (instead of up =/) but they work it.

I actually kinda like the tunic thing. I have some extra AoBR bodies sitting around I don't plan to use (they came in a lot I picked up on EBay) I can cut the legs off if the Marauder legs look too spindly. Then I can just trim them down to the right length and glue them on.

I've been plugging away at some more Orks. Up to 30 finished now, though I took a week and a half off because work was busy. Still trying to convince myself to drop another $40-50 on those Kromlech heads, but haven't been successful yet, lol.

Sadly, they're runts. Even next to the shortest of my Orks. And absolutely dwarfed by the bigger/taller ones.



I got a pretty good deal on them. Maybe I'll just toss them back up on Ebay for what I paid. I wanted to use them but they're pretty glaringly off/

Oh my.




Brings my collection to about 30 of these guys, all unassembled. So what if I already have like 250 IGuard troopers between my Steel Legion and metal Cadians?

Awesome stuff, as always. Thanks for posting the great image showing how you have "Tru-Scaled" them up! Very helpful!

You know, enough talking about doing Squats, and time to do Squats. You should always do squats. Leg day is important.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Squats.



So I only have three of them so far, two rifleme- err, riflesquats, and a squad leader or something.



I'd been putting off doing these guys for a while until I was really sure what I wanted out of them. After all, Ork Boyz and Space Marines are a dime a dozen on Ebay, but unassembled plastic Squats (from a kit that hasn't been produced for over 20 years) aren't, lol.


These guys were both fun to do, and a bit of a challenge. You see, the original plastic Squats were designed with this lasgun in mind.



So the hands are very close together by default. But if I wanted to make them blend in with my Had to do some creative cutting. Like usual, some wrist rotation was also pretty standard. The guy with his weapon raised was an arm modified from a heavy weapons arm (cutting off its padded shoulder), and the shoulder from a regular one.

I probably could have saved myself some time and effort by using the arms from the plastic Cadian kit, but I hate that kit that much. The lasguns are a split. One came from the Catachan kit, the other (with its icon filed off) came from the Cadian kit.



I'll probably go back to finishing my Orks before I hit any more Squats (since I have around 250 IGuard figures between my Steel Legion and metal Cadians alone), except at the gym. Leg days are M, W, F. But plastic Squats will have to wait for now.

But they don't look any taller?

Oh sorry, got it yeah. OK

Great job.

Wow, squats!

Three things:

1) Cool looking Squats Sarge, just giving them the modern style weapons stops the cartoonishness;

2) I hope that Space Marine has good groin armour now!

3) This;

 Camkierhi wrote:
But they don't look any taller?

Oh sorry, got it yeah. OK

Great job.

Gets an exalt.

Cool collection dude.

Might give the ork head idea a go when I do my 40k ork deadzone Marauders.

 Jadenim wrote:
1) Cool looking Squats Sarge, just giving them the modern style weapons stops the cartoonishness;

Yeah, it was always a plan with the Squats. The old school lasguns are just a no-go, lol.

JoeRugby wrote:Might give the ork head idea a go when I do my 40k ork deadzone Marauders.

It adds an extra step of having to build up a neck with putty, but I really think it improves their look tremendously.

That's fantastic! I actually came into the game after the demise of the Squats, but being a Dwarf fan from Fantasy Battles, I love it! How many of the models do you own? They would be awesome to mix into a unit of regulars, in my opinion, if you don't have enough to run on their own (as proxies, probably yes?)

What a short post. I want to see more squats!

I should feel bad now for that pun. I really like what you did with the Lasgun replacements. It just feels "right."

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Jadenim wrote:
1) Cool looking Squats Sarge, just giving them the modern style weapons stops the cartoonishness;

Yeah, it was always a plan with the Squats. The old school lasguns are just a no-go, lol.

JoeRugby wrote:Might give the ork head idea a go when I do my 40k ork deadzone Marauders.

It adds an extra step of having to build up a neck with putty, but I really think it improves their look tremendously.

Got any pics of one of your boyz without arms so I can pinch what you've done

The origin of my Eldar is somewhat mixed. When the Dark Eldar first appeared with 3rd Edition, we had a friend buy a the first boxed set. Mixed with the two or three rule boxed sets we had, that made for a fairly impressive Dark Eldar retinue.  That nobody every decided to put together. Most of them disappeared in the sands of time, but I had a small block of them left over. The problem? They're pretty ugly, so I'd resolved to use them as base decorations where I could theoretically obscure their shortcomings with mud and blood.

Then I had some fun conversion ideas, and I picked up a small lot of Eldar Guardians and bits and some Dark Eldar on EBay. The conversion ideas never happened either. It seems that Space Elves just weren't to be.


Then I thought to myself, well, I need some Eldar for my skirmish armies, and I have a fair number of them sitting around between Deldar and Eldar.  Why not combine them to be a small Corsair army? Nice, fluffy, and brutal. Plus another nod back to Rogue Trader. And every good sci-fi universe needs space pirates. Eldarrrrr.


Sorry.



Obviously I needed to convert, not just kitbash. Otherwise they have no place on this blog. Fortunately, my dissatisfaction with the core kit parts made this easy. I shortened up the Dark Eldar splinter rifles. Then I tweaked the shuriken catapult arms so they could get better poses out of them. Mostly just had to clip the firing hand off and then move it. Added some blades from the old school Dark Eldar sprues to pirate them up a bit. I rounded out the helmets too, because I never liked the super tall conehead look that much, and I wanted them to not just look like bog standard Guardian or Kabalite helmets.



Then I thought, well, it would be kinda lazy to just mix and match parts, and I wanted this band of corsairs to look like they were intermixed Dark and (light?) Eldar. I really like the Scourges heads (and the Reaver jetbike heads, but those are harder to get on the cheap), but headswaps aren't really converting either. So I thought, what if I swap parts of the legs around? This was a little easier said than done in some cases, but it gave them far less of a uniform look, which would be important to the aesthetic. So the ones who are regular Eldar (and thus still concerned about their souls) will have spirit stones. The Dark Eldar pirates will not. Otherwise, I will probably mix and match the weapons without too much regard for what's "legal".

Case in point, I took the splinter cannon from the 3rd edition kit, one of the few parts of that kit that looks okay, and put it on a Guardian body, with a Kabalite head (which apparently needs to be rounded out a bit now that I look at it.



Not entirely sold on the blade bits from the 3rd edition kit. I may get rid of those.





At any rate, this will be just the start. I plan to paint them up as Void Dragons, since I like the way that scheme looks, and their fluff from The Doom of Mymeara painted them as dangerous and unpredictable, as well as a bit of loose cannons under their haughty pirate princess, who should be fun to model up eventually.

All you do is add length to the space marine legs?

The DE factions will be fun to watch, I myself don't know anything about them.

 Johnnytorrance wrote:
All you do is add length to the space marine legs?

No, they have a 1.5mm spacer at the waist too. The Marine models are mostly plagued with scale issues around their arms, making them into gorillas. By lengthening the legs and torso slightly, it lessens those issues.

Hm... I don't know if a RT beakie could handle that cutting.

Anyways, it is something I may have to try on my next army.

Mind doing a tutorial sometime on how you convert your marines - a nice step-by-step, perhaps?

 Stormwall wrote:
Hm... I don't know if a RT beakie could handle that cutting.

Anyways, it is something I may have to try on my next army.

The real problem with RTB01 Beakies is that they definitely skip leg day.

 Kepora wrote:
Mind doing a tutorial sometime on how you convert your marines - a nice step-by-step, perhaps?

I haven't really worked on any Space Marines recently but that may change. I never really did any step by step photos. I'll try to remember the next time I do.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Stormwall wrote:
Hm... I don't know if a RT beakie could handle that cutting.

Anyways, it is something I may have to try on my next army.

The real problem with RTB01 Beakies is that they definitely skip leg day.

 Kepora wrote:
Mind doing a tutorial sometime on how you convert your marines - a nice step-by-step, perhaps?

I haven't really worked on any Space Marines recently but that may change. I never really did any step by step photos. I'll try to remember the next time I do.

Please do so, it'd be great for leaders/characters.

And c'mon don't they know that the Emprah passed down to Chaplains the holy writ of "thou shalt not skip leg day." Maybe the Squats looked down on it and holed up due to the shame of the Imperium?

A bit of an aside to the project, but something I worked on. For those who enjoyed the original "Veteran Sergeant Plays... Dark Verngernce!", while my buddies played Advanced Squad Leader, I was busy assembling the Space Marine models from Deathstorm.

This is a cool kit, the Death Company Marines. For my taste, they're way too busy-looking and have too many details, but the basic kit is actually well posed, with some interesting bits. In the end, I only ended up having to do some light conversion (arm rotations, weapon swaps) on a couple of the models to get some decent poses. I swapped in a couple of Sanguinary Guard legs I had lying around that I wasn't planning on using to give a couple models some more dynamic poses, given than they all have melee weapons and jump packs.




My buddy was not excited about the idea of painting this pose.



Though when we realized he looks like he's about to do a Macho Man Randy Savage elbow drop (but with a chainsword)), it was kept. The thought to paint him up tie-dyed was dropped as too difficult, however.


So you can look forward to Veteran Sergeant Plays... Derthsterm! in the near future. Potentially with scenarios from other Shield of Baal books.

I'm not sure if that effect on the last photo was intentional or not, but it's pretty damn cool.

But you ddin't "tru-scale" them yeah? That's the big downside of those new "busy" models--it would be really hard to cut and extend the legs, though the waist might work. Then you end up with some "tall" marines and some shorties. That's what I'm scared of, actually.

What do you use to cut the legs with? Do you just use a hobby knife, or do you have some kind of saw?

Anyway, I love your conversions, thanks for taking all the photos and sharing.

No. Deathstorm belongs to my buddy (attached to the hand flipping me off in the pixelated picture, which is just a focal pixelate effect). Scaling them up is a lot of work, and I'm barely willing to do it to my models, let alone using legs I'd have to essentially resculpt from scratch, hence why my models are almst entirely built from the basic kits. Everything else is too much effort. And I don't like the overly busy kits like Sternguard anyway.

Tabards, excessive purity seals, etc. I mean, for fun, the guy with the power sword has like 11 purity seals on the model (6 are sculpted into the legs and torso alone), just to highlight how silly that kit is. I almost gave him a shoulderpad with a giant parchment on it, but I wanted the models to retain proper Codex markings (since the BA are a Codex chapter) so all their left pauldrons have the chapter badge on them. I'm a sucker for little details like that, and my buddy... is not. I also matched up the Mk4 torso and helmet, which he wouldn't have done, lol.

They were playing Advanced Squad Leader anyway which is fun to watch them play since it has about a gazillion rules and they don't know any of them), so it basically gave me an excuse to hang out and hobby. Plus, now that they are assembled, he can paint them so we can play the scenarios. Eventuallly he's going to have the strangest Space Marine army ever, with Dark Angels, Blood Angles and a tactical squad of basic Marines (trying to convince him to paint them as UM so he can have 3 out of the Big 4).

For leg cutting I use a hobby knife for most everything.

So it's been a while since I've done any real work on Space Marines (Deathstorm doesn't count because they weren't mine and weren't scaled up, just some minor conversion work.)

I've had the idea for this model floating around in my head for a while. Probably a year. I'd just never actually gotten around to starting it because I burned out on building Space Marines for a while. I wanted an badass Apothecary. But I wanted him to look like he was a Marine first, and since I don't play, it didn't matter what he was armed with, and I like Bolters.

Did you ever worry your Apothecary wasn't badass enough?

Meet Senior Apothecary Donatus, 5th Company, Invectors.



He will be getting an apothecary backpack shortly, but leaving it off makes the details a bit more apparent. I put the tubes behind him to better protect them from incoming fire, and gave him a Company Champion's shoulderpad (befitting his rank as a Veteran and providing extra ballistic protection while he works on fallen Marines)

You can also see where I shortened up the saw and reductor to look like they've been retracted (so as not to get in the way and to protect them when not in use). The narthecium comes from the Grey Knight Terminators kit (my buddy wasn't using it), obviously with the hand and arm separated, and then mounted on the upper portion of a regular Tactical Squad arm. The legs come from the Death Company kit (my buddy was willing to trade for some Sanguinary Guard legs for his DC). He's also the first model without an aquila torso. Can't remember where the head came from. I picked up a bunch of heads with antennas because I planned to use them for character models, sergeants and squad leaders. I think it's from the Land Raider Crusader kit. I don't much like the Apothecary head with the lamp on the side of it. Looks pretty impractical. This one looks like it's got all kinds of diagnostic equipment on it. Maybe a laser or something to help cauterize wounds. Let your imagination run wild. I just know it looks cool.

It's been so long since I worked on Marines I couldn't find my small drill bit, so his bolter is unattached, but eventually the barrel will get drilled out and converted to a Cerceus-pattern.

I've put him into the classic "advancing at the alert" pose that's not only one of my favorites, but popular among readers of the blog. This was accomplished, by, as usual, a clip and flip of the wrist.



He still needs a bit of cleanup, but this is effectively his final form. I was quite pleased that it came out more or less like I wanted it. This character ends up in a lot of the fluff that I put together for this project's back story, so I wanted his miniature to look every bit the part and do him justice.

This model is also a bit of a tribute to the Navy Corpsmen I was privileged to know and serve with, and on more than one occasion are the reason friends of mine are still alive today.

Looks great. That particular shoulder pad looks great too.

I love that company champion shoulder pad too. i wish they where more available :/

 Desubot wrote:
I love that company champion shoulder pad too. i wish they where more available :/

I have one entire pair! Been very hard sourcing them on bits sites :(

Some really nice conversions, the apothecary is particularly well done, they usually look very static and not very combat ready and yours is ready to rock!

Now that's one seriously badass apothecary, I think he's my favourite of all the marines you've done so far; he looks like he's ready to get stuck in where ordinary apothecary models look somehow forlorn, waving their chainswords around as if to remind everyone they're there.

Desubot wrote:I love that company champion shoulder pad too. i wish they where more available :/

I have 4 of them. Well, 3 now. I keep an eye out for them fromt time to time on EBay. But they're reserved for "special" models.

I'd had this Apothecary planned out for a while, though using that shoulder pad was something of a last second idea. It just seemed like it fit right.

Gogsnik wrote: ordinary apothecary models look somehow forlorn, waving their chainswords around as if to remind everyone they're there.

This made me laugh.

I'm glad you guys liked it. Like I said, I had this model floating around in my head for a while, and I wanted to make sure it was done right. I swapped the legs with a buddy when I assembled those Deathstorm Death Company Marines (you can see the Sanguinary Guard legs on them), taking the two sets of Mk7 legs from the DC kit. had to shave off most of the detail, but I managed to save enough of the wings on the right leg to re-attach them. When I looked at the pose for the legs, I decided they were perfect for the Apothecary idea.

Then somebody had asked for a tutorial on how to build them, which I'll put together shortly.

He's a pretty healthy mix of parts. GKT narthecium, new Tactical arms and bolter, old Tactical torso, DC legs, LRC head, Sternguard Crux Terminatus bit, Ravenwing apothecary backpack, and pouches. He'll have one of my pugio-stlye daggers assembled from the SM knife and a High Elf spear tip that I shared on the previous page.

People have asked for a tutorial on how I do these, so here goes. I tried to take some pictures as I went along with the apothecary.

So, how exactly do I achieve these Tall Scale or True Scale Space Marines? Here's a handy tutorial:

In the end, you'll have turned a 10 part model into a 40 part model. Sound like fun?

My two primary demonstration models will be this Apothecary here:



And the Section Leader with wrist-mounted auspex (closed).



Step 1: Preparing the models

Well, the first thing that needs to be done is to decide what you want to do with the model. In the case of the Apothecary, I liked the posture of his legs, so I was only going to be extending them, rather than a full rebuild. In the case of the section leader, I was using the old "squatting" legs from the old Tactical Squad kit, and wanted to do a fully new pose with him. This meant cutting the feet free of the model.

With these projects, I'll typically work in batches. You'll need to allow time for all the components to dry and set once you've glued them anyway, so doing them in groups of 4-5 may cut your downtime significantly. You can see with the ones below, I've removed their feet. The difference in the poses you can achieve can be dramatic since the foot will no longer be anchored to the leg in a static position.



However, if you're using specialized legs, or if you're simply happy with the pose the legs are currently in, you can leave them alone. In the case of the Apothecary, his legs came from the Death Company kit, and I was happy with the way they were standing. So I moved on to the next step, which was inserting plastic card spacers.

I use 1mm thick card on the legs. One in the shin, one at the hip. If you're keeping the pose, you might want to do a mid-thigh cut, but I've found I like the waist cut better. It gives a lot more options later.



For the torsos, I use 1.5mm thick plastic card, cutting it into strips to line the outside of the torso "ring". Cut/file the outside edge smooth, then, using a rounded-tip hobby blade, scrape the inner side into a rounded shape.

Adding another small square inside (or some putty) will allow more contact points for gluing the torso to the legs later. This will add length to the torso. Now, I add a lot of gear to my Space Marines because aesthetically I like them that way. If you aren't going to be adding pouches and grenades, you will need to invest in some Green Stuff to model out their belt lines.

Step 2: Re-assembly.

Carefully, using hobby snips or a hobby blade, cut the excess down around the legs. Then, even more carefully, use the blade to trim it as close to the contour of the leg as possible. Once this is done, you can file it smooth if necessary.

Once you've shaved down the plastic inserts, you'll want to use either Green Stuff or Liquid Green Stuff to fill the gaps.



Now to prepare the pose. What is your Space Marine doing? Is he aiming? Is he patroling? For the Apothecary, I wanted him to be holding his gun at the "alert", which means with the muzzle pointing slightly downward, but ready to be brought up for firing. I felt this gave a certain "attitude" to the model. So how do we accomplish this with the lackluster arms provided in most Space Marine kits? With a knife of course.

Any time you're posing a Space Marine (or any model for that matter), you want to be considering range of movement. At the very least, try the pose yourself. If you can't do it comfortably, why would the Space Marine? If you're trying to impart a swinging motion with a melee weapon for example, try a couple swings while watching yourself in the mirror. Make sure you know how that weapon is used in real life too. You swing a top-heavy weapon like an axe or a hammer much differently than you swing a sword which is balanced closer to the grip.

My Apothecary looks like this:



So, how do we get there?

Sorry I didn't take any in-progress pictures of the arms. That was an oversight I'll correct in the future. For now, I'll get as good of shots as we can for it. Fortunately I couldn't find my small drill bit for the barrel so the boltgun isn't glued in place yet.

Here's a basic diagram of the arm cuts.



First, we're going to clip the arm just below the "under shoulder" that the shoulder pad attaches to. Once this is done, we can rotate the arm to do whatever we want, from an aiming pose, to the "alert" pose. This cut is fundamental to pretty much all the Space Marines I do, and is the base of posing. Think about your own body. Almost all of the directions you can move your arm start at the shoulder.



Second we're going to clip the wrist and flip it around so that the wrist soft armor is sloping up, instead of down. Sounds confusing, but an upward slope will obviously give us a downward angled hand.



Now, since we've fundamentally altered the way the right hand sits, the left hand isn't going to sit flush on the bolter. So it needs to be cut free and rotated. You can see this best on the Section Leader:



The Apothecary doesn't make a great example because I had to cut the whole forearm off that model to replace it with the Narthecium anyway. Here it is on another model, and you can see the far more drastic angle that the cuts achieved.



And there you go. You've now made a 30-40 part model:




As an aside, I wrote The Brief And Humorous History of the Horus Heresy on my blog. You should check it out:
https://veteransergeant.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/a-brief-history-of-the-horus-heresy/


Thanks for following along.

That's great little guild. Inspiring to say the least.

Ever considered increasing the size of the soles of the boots or does it look to awkward 0.5-0.2 mm?

I dunno. I guess I could add .5mm to the soles. I actually have a bunch of .5mm card from when I first started the project. But I don't know how much value that would be. I don't want their shoes to look like platforms, and I'd have to do extra work for the legs that weren't firmly planted (thus showing tread), cutting the soles off and putting the card underneath them.

I get height out of the models just by straightening the legs and cutting off the feet. The models, once they are standing a bit straighter, really start to get some of the height back that the "squatting" pose t

Damn, those guys are looking awesome! Do you have any tips on getting the feet free?

Cut slowly and carefully. Use a narrow-tipped blade to dig in under the front and back. Basically work until you can pull the foot free. You're going to have to clean it up and gap fill with green stuff/liquid green stuff anyway. At least, that was possible with the older plastic. I've heard the newer stuff is much harder.


Just in case anyone was worried I'd given up on the Waaaagh, nope. It's about 80% done.



It's standing at 28 Orks and 3 Killa Kans for fire support right now. Needs another 5 or 6 orks to finish the main body of the platoon, and then another 5-6 in support. Needs at least one more PanzOrkfaust for sure. I have a grot Kannon I haven't assembled yet (it's metal and I don't have superglue). I'm pretty sure I have all the models I need to complete this at this point, they're just not assembled yet. I didn't want to get carried away putting Orks together, and then need more because I made too many with Shootas or something. I should make a spreadsheet, lol.

Then I have a damaged Leman Russ that is a prime candidate for conversion to an Ork Loota Vehicle. That ought to be a fieldable force for a small game.

Those orks are looking very good and the one with the eavy shoota and the bionic on his helmet reminds me of the ork from the Dawn of War intro, very cool indeed. I like that you have a few running orks as well, they are frequently described as charging forwards and yet the models are always very static

The running orks are mostly converted/modified from Stormboyz bodies. The Stickbomma in the front row just kinda ended up like that, and I kinda liked it instead of moving his legs back to a more standing position. It's not perfect, but I liked how it looked kinda like he was stepping into the throw.

I need to work up an ammo box for the big shoota boy you're referring too, but once he has a rock/rubble under his feet he'll definitely look good. I like that the older Boyz kit had arms that weren't attached to the weapons already. And I didn't want all of my Big Shootas to look the same, so I've been cutting them free of the arms they are attached to on the sprue. Figured a lefty would make him stick out a bit.

I was disappointed with the guns fixed to the arms myself although, I suppose you get more on the sprue now so it's swings and roundabouts. I just like seeing ork models really, I don't know why exactly but there is something about orks that just cheers me up. You seem to have added some animation to yours that is often lacking, they look like they are actually doing something other than standing around gurning.

Oh, hello! Very sneaky, sarge, slipping that update in.

I'd originally meant to do more with it, was a teaser for some Chaos Marines, but I've been in the process of moving, one of my work's peak seasons, and then I was traveling. So I'd only just started on some of them, and quite a few are unfinished aside from that one model.

I'll get back to it in the next couple weeks I'm sure.

Oh my...

Ooh!

Needs more rats.

 Kepora wrote:
Needs more rats.

My buddy already has a fully painted Skaven warband. Sadly my old Marienburgers disappeared somewhere and I haven't been able to find them yet. I'll rebuild them. After all, the town will need some exterminators.

 Kepora wrote:
Needs more rats.

How about a big one?


Started whipping up human mercenaries by kit-bashing the Mercenaries bits with Empire State Troops bodies and some other parts, and then repositioning the hands and weapons. I've got more pictures, but I've been too busy to put it all into a coherent post.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:


On other topics, I've not been terribly excited about the Tau thus far. Aside from the aesthetic improvement of the shorter rifle, I haven't really felt like I've been able to do much with the Fire Warriors, and didn't have any Tau models I really liked yet.

Well that's changed. Introducing my Pathfinder rail rifle sniper team:



Unfortunately the optic got roughed up a little, so it needs to be fixed back down. Seems It was made from the little gubbin on the front of an extra Ion Rifle I had.

The left arm on the shooter is from the Hammerhead crewmember (I think. That's what I pried it off of, lol), with the hand clipped off and rotated downward so he's got it balanced on the crook of his arm against his knee.

The spotter's left hand was cut and rotated too so he could hold the carbine balanced on his leg. I also filed the waist on the legs at a flatter angle so he'd sit more upright



These guys came out fairly close to how I'd envisioned them. Once again the left arms of the Tau have proved a liability, but the adjustment I made to the Rail Rifle model is satisfactory. But I wanted to have a shooter and spotter team that would look good matched as a pair. They just need a little bit of cleanup now.

I stumbled upon your blog just now. I must say I'm impressed by the amount of dedication and precise work you have put in your miniatures.

Being a Tau player, I do appreciate what you have done here. Keep converting!

I'm glad you've enjoyed it. I haven't been working on models for a few months since I moved. Mostly because it was summer and I live half a block from the beach. It is hard to stay focused on indoor hobbies with vacation rentals full of Zonies and warmer water. The other problem is that as far as tabletop games go, we've only been playing X-Wing, and there's nothing to convert, really.

I'm thinking about picking up the new Horus Heresy game though, and I have some Early Imperial Romans and Celts to play with, not that either of those things are Tau-related. But, if either of those things interest you, stay tuned. Hopefully the colder weather and it getting darker earlier will get me back in a coverting mood.

Hey whatever tickles your fancy. Personally i'd be chuffed to see anything coming out from you, sure you could throw a nifty zest onto it.

Well, I prepaid for Betrayal at Calth at the FLGS today. So I'm going to have to do something with it.

Funny thing is, I don't even like Mk IV or the Heresy that much, but I figured I'd regret it if I passed up snagging that many models for a comparatively reasonable price.

Of course, for perspective, the 45 or so Ancients I bought cost me just under $50, while the 40ish GW figures were almost three times that, haha.

I realize I kinda left this blog hanging. Problem was, I moved to a great new place right by the beach, right before summer. After that, it was all surfing and Zonies and I got distracted.

Our Mordheim campaign was short-lived, so I never really did much work with it either. Still haven't even touched Betrayal at Calth (what a waste of money that's looking like, lol). Didn't like the Warlord miniatures Romans much. The scale was off on them too much. Heck, the auxiliaries and legionnaires don't even match eachother.

Then we started playing a lot of X-Wing on tabletop days, which has very little relevance to this project log since I don't have a magnet small enough to do the B-Wing's rotational cockpit and buying just one or two of them seems cost inefficient, lol..

But, I figure I'll deliver the Chaos Marine, at least. He's been Tall-scaled (but not cleaned and finished) using Raptor legs and parts from the old Chaos Marine kit (which I hate).

I trimmed the "stalks" on the Chaos Backpack. Never liked that design. Gave him some severed shrunken heads that I think came from a Lizardmen kit, but I'm not 100% sure. Would be fun to continue making Chaos Marines, but who knows if it will happen.




The only thing I've really done with X-Wing is to magnetize them, which makes them more zoomie looking. Really easy, and fairly cheap modification too, and it makes such a striking difference on the table.



We'll see if I can get motivated to get any more 40K work done in the near future. I just got a bunch of supplies when I did the X-Wing ships, so we'll see if the bug bites again.

Nice Chaos Marine. How come you didn't drill the magnets into the X Wing ships? Nice idea though, very zoom-y.

EDC

Love seeing your work! Great job on the CSM. I hate their back packs too

That idea for the Xwing models is simple but so darn effective ! I may even consider this for my Battlestar models

Awesome work.

 evildrcheese wrote:
Nice Chaos Marine. How come you didn't drill the magnets into the X Wing ships? Nice idea though, very zoom-y.

EDC

I tested it with smaller magnets that could be drilled into the ships, but they don't get enough surface area on the ball, so the grip is significantly weaker. Makes the ships have a tendency to flop and slide. Plus, with a lot of ships, it requires really careful balancing where you're going to drill, otherwise one end becomes heavier than the other and encourages sliding. The ring magnets are polarized to the inside of the ring, so once they are contoured to the ball, their grip is solid enough that you can hold on the ship, and shake it, and the base will twirl around, but it won't come off. Means no matter the shape or weight of the ship, it can be mounted where the post was, and still grip enough to stay where you put it.

One thing I've done when using ball bearings is place a bit of putty on the magnet, then let the ball bearing press it's shape into the putty (use a bit of water or something to stop it from sticking). When it's all done, the greater contact surface area creates a lot more friction, helping to keep everything stable.

It's really just important to "rough up" the ball so it isn't so slick and near-perfectly round. It will increase friction, and the grip of the magnet will do the rest of the work.

Looks pretty good. Wish I did this to my guys before I started.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 evildrcheese wrote:
Nice Chaos Marine. How come you didn't drill the magnets into the X Wing ships? Nice idea though, very zoom-y.

EDC

I tested it with smaller magnets that could be drilled into the ships, but they don't get enough surface area on the ball, so the grip is significantly weaker. Makes the ships have a tendency to flop and slide. Plus, with a lot of ships, it requires really careful balancing where you're going to drill, otherwise one end becomes heavier than the other and encourages sliding. The ring magnets are polarized to the inside of the ring, so once they are contoured to the ball, their grip is solid enough that you can hold on the ship, and shake it, and the base will twirl around, but it won't come off. Means no matter the shape or weight of the ship, it can be mounted where the post was, and still grip enough to stay where you put it.

That makes alot of sense.

EDC

Something lurks in the shadows...








Genestealer Cultists sneaking back into the fluff and the model range makes me sooooo happy. These models are very good looking, but not friendly to conversion as their poses are locked. I have, however, begun to bend them to my will. These are early mockups for you guys since I'm impatient.

Such cool.models. Looking forward to seeing what you do with them.

EDC

Watching intently.....

I'm loving the new Genestealer models, but can't wait to see what you do with these.

Can't wait to see how these turn out

*Grabs popcorn*
*waits for more*

Glad you guys like them. They're going to take some work, but I like having more firing stance models. I mocked up another few last night but I will probably take a second look at them. Basically did one sprue using the parts from the models individually. May attack the second sprue by cutting off all the arms and weapons and then mixing them as works best. Which means the last guy will probably get a spare IGuard or hybrid arm or something when not everything works out, lol.

If you're curious about the changes, this guy:



Originally was this guy:

Much prefer yours bud.

Damn you games workshop, we all curse them and gripe on, but in reality they are quite brilliant. This silly game is going to get me walking into a store the end of the month.Damn those hybrids.

Cool, love your work.

Look forward to seeing what you do then ripping it off

 Camkierhi wrote:
Much prefer yours bud.

Damn you games workshop, we all curse them and gripe on, but in reality they are quite brilliant. This silly game is going to get me walking into a store the end of the month..

Well, they at least got me to EBay. I only picked up the Gen 3 & 4 models so far, but I'll eventually have the whole set. I just don't have any need for the Space Marines, and the game contents will be a dime a dozen in a couple months. But new Genestealer Cultists?

 JoeRugby wrote:
Cool, love your work.

Look forward to seeing what you do then ripping it off

Thanks. Please do. Everything you've made so far is spectacular. And painted.

Some clearer comparisons.

Darren Latham painted these guys up.


These are mine with the same exact base models:

Your poses definitely look more natural and realistic.

I definitely like these reposes more, as the originals look like their ready for war, where your's feel like their already in the heat of battle.

I look forward to seeing more of these.

Damn this Darren Latham chap, whoever he is. I'd planned to paint mine in traditional blue and purple colours, but now I want to do them in orange too. I don't have time to do one set, let alone two!

I like your reposes, but honestly, I like the models enough as they are that I probably won't bother. I think you improve them from 9/10 to 9.5/10, and if I had a choice between the originals and yours, I'd probably go for a mixture of each. That sounds a bit mean, so basically, well done for being less lazy than me, and doing something good!

 Fifty wrote:
Damn this Darren Latham chap, whoever he is.

Incidentally, he is the sculptor of these models :-D

So yeah, on behalf of my wallet: damn him!

 Fifty wrote:
That sounds a bit mean, so basically, well done for being less lazy than me, and doing something good!

Nothing to apologize for, lol. If GW's models weren't good as they are, nobody would buy them.

Wait, people buy those awful Space Wolves monstrosities like the Wulfen and the Wolf Chariot, so obviously that's not true.

So, if the models weren't good, significantly less people would buy them. I like the Genestealer Cult models the way they come. They're actually really gorgeous. I just think they can be more exciting. And since I rarely actually play any GW games, I have plenty of time to cut them apart. To me, the fun is taking the models and creating something new and unique out of it. And inspiring other people to do the same.

Speaking of inspiration:

Any good Genestealer Cult needs some Genestealers. I still have quite a bit more to do. I want to raise its head, and get its left foot oriented more forward, but I like the way this turned out. Obviously inspired by the old Genestealer art from Space Hulk/Rogue Trader era, which was in turn inspired by the wonderful cover art from Den Beauvais and the old 1989 Aliens Volume 2 comic series.

Your posing and positioning make the models feel a lot more alive / realist.

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” - H.P. Lovecraft

Necrons? This should be good.

Necrons are still on the workbench until I get some new parts for them. I just thought I'd give a little teaser about what's on the horizon. Never fear, these will be Oldcrons-inspired and as Lovecraftian as the models and my limited sculpting talent allows. I am going with all-Deathmark monocular heads because I think it makes them look more "alien" and thus far scarier.


However, the modeling bug definitely bit, and because I was going hiking early this morning and the ladyfriend is out of town, I had an afternoon free from weekend excess.

I finished up the rough mock-ups for the Genestealer Cultists. These guys are ready for gap-filling and any finishing touches bits. But I figured I'd show you what I did with them structurally. Each of the photos below has the identical base models next to one another. A few of them are more or less "off the sprue" (with head swaps and the head-pegs cut off) but that's because I figure I'll eventually have around 30-40 of these guys and some of the base poses are okay.




Then I whipped up 6 new Eldar Corsairs, including two with old Rogue Trader/2nd Edition era Eldar melta gun (now "fusion gun") and lasguns (when that used to be a things) that will count as lasblasters.



Some closer up detail on the lunging Dark Eldar with the flail. I really wanted to capture the essence of motion with his whole body pivoting into the flail motion.



Seems like a ridiculously unsafe weapon to use, but hey.


I put together a handful of Tau Fire Warriors and a Pathfinder who will be very scared of that Necron above once they are both finished, but they aren't very exciting.


Lost my heavier bladed knife temporarily, so I couldn't work on any of the Space Marine ideas, and a few Chaos Marines I have lying around. Chopping up 1-1.5mm card and Space Marine legs is just too tiring for an X-acto #1. Oh well.

I've waited 20 years for a new multi-part Genestealer Hybrid kit.

I'm still waiting, but in the mean time I'll make my own.


As you can tell by the sudden flurry of activity, Deathwatch Overkill, and the Genestealer Cult models more specifically, have me excited about the Warhammer 40K modeling hobby again. I haven’t actually played the game yet (I actually don’t even own the game), but these guys take me back to the halcyon days of Rogue Trader and 2nd Edition.

Unlike the 3/4 Gens, the 1st & 2nd Generation Hybrids are a lot easier to modify. I actually figured it would be the opposite, but I was wrong. Like the 3/4 Gen Brood Brothers, I kept the bodies intact, and removed the arms. On certain kits I kept maybe one of the arms in its original configuration, but otherwise I just cut them all off and made two rows. One of left arms and the other of right arms. Because of the way they join, many of the arms will need some gap fill as well (though they can be filed smooth in some places and look fine, but these models just look strikingly better when their arms aren’t jutting off at the kinds of unnatural angles that are necessitated by the molding process.




Two of the stock models for comparison



What you can get, for relatively low effort, is a bunch of unique models, rather than two sets of identical ones. It is a lot less painful than the Brood Brothers, too. A lot of these can simply have the hands cut free and rotated. Arms with partial sleeves can be clipped and rotated to get different angles, etc. The nice thing is, since they are all hideous mutants, there's really no limitation on the configuration. As long as at least one hand has an autopistol, you're pretty much set.


Intermixed with Brood Brothers and a Purestrain



So far, since the Genestealer Cult would likely be an urban phenomenon, and the models have mining/industrial clothing, I’ve wanted to give my Genestealers a hunched-over look to them like they had been trying to do a lot of sneaking around in human-sized areas, and were lurking. So none of the more common “arms wide open” looks for them.

Then, as usual, a size comparison with my True Scale Space Marines.



I picked up two sets of the Autogun Chaos Cultists too, who will fill out my Cult as Brood Brother thralls once they've had their Chaos symbols cleaned off. I like those models, but there isn't much you can do with them, modeling wise.

Now to get me some Aberrants and a Magus.

Are you using a Razor Saw to cut off the arms?
I Cannibalised an ebay purchase to give two old school guys some arms (also a chaos cultist arm used)
http://i.imgur.com/ngbwOLC.jpg
Link because the pic is huge and won't re-scale.

I love the models but having seen someone describe one of the 2nd gen as 'Waving to a m8' I'm now of a need to convert like you have

You manage to capture so much movement in your models! Excellent work.

EDC

Really great reposing Srg.

Good inspiration for when I pick up my copy of overkill

So, with no Genestealer Cult models left until I get my hands on the Magus and Aberrants, my attention wandered to Necrons whose bits finally came in. I'd had some fun ideas for Necrons for a while, but no interest in the army because, honestly, I find the Newcrons uninteresting. Giving them too much personality made them boring to me. I don't want to be in their heads. I don't want them to have humanlike ambitions. It's like all those crappy Predator novels. Don't put me in their heads. That takes away the mystery, the alien-ness.

Now, dark, Lovecraftian, menacing, alien Oldcrons? Those guys were awesome. The Necrons were a faction that were better the less we knew about them. They're old, their motives are unclear, but they're definitely cranky after waking up.

I had a small army of the original metal ones, but I wanted to go a new direction with my Oldcrons. First up, eyes. My Oldcrons are two things. First, they are old and alien. And second, they're in robot bodies, so there is no need for binocular vision. So I decided, to make my Oldcrons more ominous and alien (less human-like), they would have the Deathmark heads with their single eye lens. Not only are the Deathmark heads awesome, they really capture the inhuman look I want for these guys.

The second thing I wanted to do was the same thing I've done with many of my other armies, which is make their weaponry less heroic scaled. Not ever having been a huge fan of the green rods (why does the gun focus and contain the beam, only to focus and contain it a second time?), they were going to be the first thing to go. Which meant clipping the rods from the gauss blasters (which will get converted later) and then cutting them in half. The end of the barrel was then affixed. The result?

“Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity.” - H.P. Lovecraft





The random hoses may come off. I'll have to see if I like them that way or not. But the overall effect from the original, with it's bizarre vestigial ax head bayonet, to the new, shorter version is a huge improvement, at least to me.



I only have five of them right now, and I'm still fiddling with them, but I'm liking the early results. Going to have to get some plastic rod to extend their necks. Apparently Necrons aren't allowed to turn their heads left or right, lol.

 Melonfish wrote:
Are you using a Razor Saw to cut off the arms?
I Cannibalised an ebay purchase to give two old school guys some arms (also a chaos cultist arm used)
http://i.imgur.com/ngbwOLC.jpg
Link because the pic is huge and won't re-scale.

I love the models but having seen someone describe one of the 2nd gen as 'Waving to a m8' I'm now of a need to convert like you have

I like the old Brood Brothers models. And the new arms seems to fit them well. I just use a precision blade hobby knife and patience to cut the arms free.

Awesome work sir. Just takes the model to that next level.

Oh and this is your fault...


That was one time only. Your nuts!

They are a massive improvement. Great old crons are the way forward. That is not dead, which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even death may die...

Great looking crons Srg.

Makes me want to start buying deathmark heads for when I do some crons

So instead of modeling yesterday morning, I spent about two hours condensing my bits collection. When I moved to the beach (from close to the beach, can you imagine how bad my miniatures buying problem would be if I lived somewhere with sensible housing costs?), I lost a lot of storage space when I gave up my big garage for a 1-car. It made no sense to have so much square footage in models. So I took to cutting about 60% of my bits off the sprues (some of these were dated back to 1998, lol), and separating them out by type so that I'd have a better idea of what I had. I've also started to figure out what I am never going to use and can probably be sold on EBay. I left anything that was at least 70% complete on the sprues for organizational purposes. It was just all those sprues that had a handful of components on them and were wasting space. I also had a lot of disorganized bits (multiple bags of heads, torsos, accessory bits, etc).

The verdict? I probably have more than enough Space Marine parts to finish my Battle Company, perhaps minus a few heavy weapons. I put together a bag of MK VI parts (heads, helmets, studded pads). Not sure what I am going to do with them. Might use them for Heresy if I ever get around to working on Betrayal at Calth. Then I have bags of Big Ammo Pouches, Little Ammo Pouches, Grenades, Mixed Pouches/Grenades, Knives, Flamers/Plasma, Melta, Pistols and Holstered Pistols, Misc Arms with weapons, skulls/trophies plus I'm sure a couple bags I've forgotten about while writing this. I then put together a Core Components bag with Mk VII legs, Mk VII/VIII torsos, MkVII heads, bare heads, backpacks, arms, bolters, shoulder pads. And a bag for Terminators and parts for Terminators. And a bag of Squats, lol. Then I did ones for IGuard, Eldar Corsairs (E & DE), Tau, Orks and Chaos. I don't have a bag for Necrons yet as the Necron collection is still small and most everything I haven't used is still on the sprue for organizational/inventory purposes while I work on them.

On the left is the box full of discarded sprues when I was done. Mind you, that's not all the sprues. It's just all the ones that are now empty.

 Camkierhi wrote:
Awesome work sir. Just takes the model to that next level.

Oh and this is your fault...

Spoiler:

Awesome. I like the belt feed to his ammo pack.

That was one time only. Your nuts!

Yeah, definitely. There's no rhyme or reason to this, other than I like looking at them when I'm done. My buddy over at SquadPainter has been badgering me to paint more of these guys long enough that I'll probably start having some "finished" models. It took forever for me to be happy enough with the results of the Space Marines that the only things I had painted were metal Guardsmen.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

I've been following your conversinos for a while now and...
MA GAD!

Yeah, this is why it's called plastic crack.

So I have nearly finished the Genestealer Cult. The only one left is the Magus, and mostly because I haven't decided exactly what I am going to with him yet.

The Aberrants were kind of a bummer. There isn't much to do with them, but I got rid of the "Hey buddy!" waving look to the ones with the picks, and I rotated the hammer heads on the sledgehammer ones to try to achieve a more natural angle rather than the one that fit easiest on the mold line, lol. I also cut the picks off and repositioned them to sit better. I also cut the skull out of one's hand, because it looked silly to have them both holding a skull for no reason. I might cut the skull out of the other one's hand, to be honest. It's just silly.



I put them on the 32mm bases (as opposed to the 1/2 Gens which I put on 25mm) because I felt like it would be more indicative of a large, out of control, oblivious monster "taking up more space". I don't much care for the 32mm bases under most circumstances, and I have plenty of 25mm laying around, but it seemed appropriate for these models.

The Primus had his arms swapped to give him an aiming pistol, rather than a pointing sword. I rotated the left arm just so it would have a better angle for that pose.



Next to a Space Marine for reference.



Hopefully soon I'll figure out what I want to do with that Magus. I kinda like it how it is, but I also kinda don't like his little pope-drapes on the front, and cutting them off would make the model look far more like the Rogue Trader-era models. Plus, pope-drapes are silly looking, and a little too reminiscent of modern priest garb, whereas I want creepy cult.


Next up will either be more Necrons, or shockingly, new Space Marines. I've decided I'm going to make stand-ins for all the Deathwatch Overkill Marines (since I already have half a dozen that work as-is). Also I am going to make a Boarding Action group to stand in for the Space Hulk Terminators, with las cutters, graviton guns, breaching charges, etc to make them look like they are equipped to enter a hostile ship.

Man, that Primus looks bad-ass. Impressive stuff sorting out your bits collection too...I've got bag of bits everywhere that I really should consolidate and organise...

EDC

If you believe this nonsense, I'm putting colors onto Space Marines. My buddy at http://squadpainter.blogspot.com/ finally convinced me to put paint on these guys. Previously I'd been too preoccupied by the idea that the models are never perfect or "done", so I just decided to get to business. I still need to do a lot of work on the ones I've started, but at least this one has all of its core colors.
 
So, I present you the work in progress of the first painted (by me, at least, a couple of guys have used them for Deathwatch) member of the Invectors Space Marines Chapter.
 

 
You can see a lot of my test-models for the colors in the background. Those silly little pewter midgets. He needs some more shading, decide on a lens color, and some touch-up, but I've been pleased with the way the color scheme came out. Working on a transfer sheet so I can get the Chapter logo on there. 
 

 
Then, finally, he'll need basing so he isn't perched on a piece of sprue anymore, lol.

But, but, but, what about the grey?!

Cool seeing some paint on your marines Srg

Good start with the painting. Keep at it!

EDC

Loving this thread, especially the detailed write ups. Thanks for the extra effort!

Best marines on the web NOW IN COLOUR!

AWESOME!

I think that's a little generous, lol. There are a lot of really talented people making Space Marines. I only take a small bit of pride in that my work occasionally inspires people to make better ones.

But I'm glad that you guys like it. I'm also more glad that they turned out well with paint on, and that the shin inserts aren't glaringly obvious. Been having lighting issues in my new place. First it was too dark, now it's too bright and the detail and shading is getting washed out, haha. The photo makes it look like there's no shading on the helmet at all. :/ Oh well. I'll play with it.

Hopefully I'll have some time to continue painting over the next week or so. My company is pretty heavily invested in the Mother's Day holiday so I've been busy at work, and the following weekend is my birthday, so nothing will get done, haha.

But I'm hoping this will get two things accomplished: Get Space Marines painted, and then move on to finishing the sculpting on my taller Orks and getting them painted too.

Nice!

Glad to see some colour going on to these guys

Looking great so far

In case anyone was curious about the color scheme:

Gray Primer

Base Color – Equal Parts Vallejo Dark Prussian Blue and Vallejo Ultramarine.

Torso/Arms/Fingers – Black

Leather Parts – Rhinox Hide / Vallejo Burnt Umber

Bolter/Weapon Casings – P3 Ironhull Gray

Metals -Vallejo Gunmetal

Eagle – Vallejo USAF Light Gray

Army Painter Dark Tone Ink



I've got another few Marines on the painting table, but it's a peak time for my work, so I've been too busy/tired to get anything more than minor progress accomplished in the last week. I'm hoping to get all the "completed" Marines painted, which will then force me to go back and revisit all the ones which don't have shin spacers yet and bring them up to current standards.

Also want to start converting Counts-As stand-ins for Deathwatch: Overkill.

Sorry guys. Got distracted by life and X-Wing again, lol.


There are about ten Space Marine models in various stages of completeness painting-wise but I haven't been staying with it.


Otherwise I've been painting up my magnetized X-Wings because we've been playing a fair amount of Heroes of the Aturi Cluster, which is a cooperative campaign for X-Wing. If you are interested in checking it out, the link is right back there. I've been compiling the latest iteration into narrative battle reports. Not quite as silly as Dark Verngearnce!, but still entertaining, I think. You be the judge.




I'll get back on the Space Marines, I promise.

They are looking tremendous. Now do a B-wing with a gyroscopic cockpit
Downloiaded Aturi, it looks great but not sure how well my kids would take to it (6 and 8.5) - they've got the for heads round the game and love it (younger one faking out his big brother with Vader and Boba Fett still a moment) and I thought it might be a good way for us to play cooperatively, but I'm concerned the additional rules would confuse them. Any thoughts?

Those Necron conversions are looking great, and I love what you've done with weapons.

I also don't like how they've changed the Necrons background, and preferred it when they where mindless machines, controlled by the will of an ageless and mysterious entity (C'tan).

 inmygravenimage wrote:
Now do a B-wing with a gyroscopic cockpit

Haha, this had actually already crossed my mind. I just didn't order a small enough magnet to do it the first time. But I'm going to be placing a new order for magnets soon since my buddy now wants to do it to his ships too.

Downloiaded Aturi, it looks great but not sure how well my kids would take to it (6 and 8.5) - they've got the for heads round the game and love it (younger one faking out his big brother with Vader and Boba Fett still a moment) and I thought it might be a good way for us to play cooperatively, but I'm concerned the additional rules would confuse them. Any thoughts?

They should catch on, especially if they already understand how the basic game works. It will take some getting used to, and you might want to scale the difficulty down (the rulebook has suggesttions) since they are younger. At least for a few missions. But really, there aren't too many new rules other than keeping track of experience, and the scripts for the Imperial ships and how they interact with the scenery and other ships. You can run the TIE Fighters, since they work off of a script. Pick a couple of the missions that don't need any of the special templates, see if they enjoy it. That way it hasn't cost you anything if they don't get into it. You can print some of the stuff off on cheap paper if need be.

Nice work on the magnetised x wings, I trust you add your own sound fx when doing the movement?

EDC

Haha, Of course. We even listen to Star Wars music.

I did put up some narrative battle reports on my blog "detailing the adventures of Brown Squadron in the Heroes of the Aturi Cluster, which is a cooperative campaign format for the game that uses this cool scripted AI for the Imperial ships.

Very cool. Makes me want to break out my X Wing! Luckily I think I'm playing on Thursday.

EDC

I'm having a I am your father session Sunday with my boys love your astromechs BTW.

really nice stuff.

almost tempting me with X-wing....almost

I won't lie, X-Wing has completely rekindled my love for Star Wars. I was obsessed with it as a kid. Had all those mediocre license fiction novels (and the handful of good ones), toys, played the X-Wing and TIE Fighter computer games, etc.

Then the prequels killed Star Wars for me. I hated them so much I couldn't even watch the originals anymore for a long time because it felt like the entire universe had been ruined.


I didn't really think The Force Awakens was very good, but at least the original trilogy and I have reconciled, haha. I'm tentatively excited for Rogue One because it looks like the Star Wars I loved as a kid.

The other good news about X-Wing is that my buddies and I will actually play it regularly, unlike 40K. The cooperative campaign format is cool too.

So I have most of my ships magnetized, because they look cooler that way.
 

 

 
 
 
But what to do about the B-Wing? Its cockpit is supposed to move with ship as it reorients. It would be unconscionable to just magnet the ship and then have its cockpit not orient correctly.
 
Enter 1/16th by 1/16th cylinder magnets. (could probably do 1/8 by 1/16 if you wanted more magnet surface area)
 

 
And the end result.
 

 
This was actually much easier than I thought it was going to be. The cockpit is actually held on by an internal peg, so cutting it off is a breeze and any imperfection on the internal peg can be filed flat.
 
After centering the hole on the body, I put a dab of paint on the end of the first magnet so it would mark where the front half needed to be drilled. 
 
Then you just drill until the magnets sit flush, and boom, done.
 
 
Next, figuring out how to de-goofy and magnetize a TIE Defender.
 

I'm impressed by the result if the B Wing and that you could be motivated to do it! Just don't lose the cockpit!

EDC

Those models look great, the magnets have let you pose them all very dynamically for the photos. Nice attention to detail on the B wing, but... I don't really understand the concept of the re-orienting cockpit since there isn't really an "up" in space? What exactly is it orienting to?

I agree with Soul Samurai, that's a great use of magnets on flyers. I assume the sphere is just a ball bearing? And I never thought about it before, but that aspect of the B-wing does seem suspect. Must be something George Lucas came up with himself.

Soul Samurai wrote:
I don't really understand the concept of the re-orienting cockpit since there isn't really an "up" in space? What exactly is it orienting to?

I don't makes the rules. I just modifies the models.

But yeah, Star Wars and science are rarely friends. One would guess that the pilot could manually choose an "up" and then the ship would orientate itself around that fixed position?



And yes, the sphere is just a nickel plated ball bearing. You can see the bag for them on the left of that prep photo. The magnets are N52 1/16th by 1/16th cylinders. And they're fairly strong. So as long as you store it properly, losing the cockpit should be difficult.

Cracking work! Glad to have been a trouble maker on the subject of B-wings

Hey man, I don't know if you remember, but i knicked your method ages ago on Heresy Online. (my name was torealis)

I've refined it to suit my own style, but I owe you a huge debt of gratitude. Over 200 upscaled marines later, and I'm still going!

I converted some friends to the upscaling ways. Our blog is here...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/694362.page

200? Jebus. I got to about 60ish and burned out. My hat's off to you. Especially since your version is even more labor intensive than mine with the green stuff and sculpting. The collection you and your friends have going is impressive though.

So I've never liked the TIE Defender all that much. It just seemed a bit too far off from the original TIE Concept. Like the creators of the TIE Fighter series ran out of ideas after the Avenger and were like "What if we make one with three wings?"

But I was definitely not a fan of the TIE Defender model for X-Wing. It always came down to the aesthetics of the wings and the tremendous gap between them making the Defender look too "big" or "round". The outward angle of the wings exacerbates this effect, while the inward angle of the Interceptors, Bombers and Advanced mitigate it.

The problem is, if you flip the wings to angle inward, then it becomes a TIE Burrito. So the best looking versions of the TIE Defender have been ones where the wings were tighter to the body.

So, when there was a recent sale on X-Wing minis, I decided to see what I could do to improve the aesthetics of the TIE Defender because $8 seemed acceptable for a ship I still might not even like when it was done.

My first attempt just chopped off the connector between the two "rings" on the support pylon, but it still didn't look right, so I decided to file down the outer ring to save about half a millimeter. Sounds like very little to worry about, but we're talking about a post that is only like 6mm long in total.

The final result:





It needs a little more finishing before I pin and glue the wings on "permanently", but here's the comparison. You can see how it really doesn't add up to all that much removed material, and I'm certain this project will be way too much effort for most people, but it really helped out the look of the ship for me.

Unfortunately, the rear magnet makes the modified one sit lower than the unmodified one, and the camera angle wasn't as "head on" as I had hoped, but you can see the changes.



How does it look on the battlespace? Well, I took some pictures of it yesterday during an Epic game.



Unfortunately the focal point for this shot wasn't on the Defender (I cropped it smaller), but you can see the new, tighter profile it presents.

Tighter is really nice; works very well. What do you make of the Punisher?

 inmygravenimage wrote:
What do you make of the Punisher?

Buy an XG-1 Gunboat model (from the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games) off of Shapeways, paint it up, and proxy it?

There's no saving the TIE Punisher. It's just awful, all the way around.

This is a cool project. Seemingly laborious, but really cool. It'll be totally worth it in the end, the above pictures with other models prove that much.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 inmygravenimage wrote:
What do you make of the Punisher?

Buy an XG-1 Gunboat model (from the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games) off of Shapeways, paint it up, and proxy it?

There's no saving the TIE Punisher. It's just awful, all the way around.

There's no saving your eyes, mate. The Punisher's arguably one of the most badass-looking Imperial ships designed; it just looks like it's meant to ruin tons of people's days at once - definitely something that someone would NOT want to see headed their way on their scanners!

 Heretic Tom wrote:
This is a cool project. Seemingly laborious, but really cool. It'll be totally worth it in the end, the above pictures with other models prove that much.

Laborious is probably a good word, lol.


I'm far more entertained by the creative aspect of building unique Space Marines than I am in playing the game anymore, so I work in fits and spurts when I get inspiration for a new figure. The payoff is mostly getting to see people try their hand at the ideas and make models that were inspired by this project, and from reading my Wordpress blog.

I've mostly been playing X-Wing recently though, and working on some other projects and freelance writing work, so I haven't had the free time in a while. Glad you have enjoyed it so far.

Nice. Do you find you knock the ships in game, thus knocking them at crazy jaunty angles?

EDC

The magnets are fairly strong. Only the heavier, off-balance ships like the B-Wing and Defender have any issues with getting jostled.

Honestly though, bumping ships in X-Wing is a big no-no since precision is so important when it comes to maneuvering. So it's not much of a problem since everyone should be being careful. However, the normal ships won't move on the ball unless you physically move them.

You can actually gently swing the peg and stand while gripping the ship itself, and the magnet will stay attached.

The only probly I see is their legs are way to long. It should be head to weist 50% weist to toe 50%

Your legs to weist is about 60-65%

Nice mic drop

Things have been quiet around here recently (playing a lot of X-Wing will do that), though I've finally been working on some new stuff.

Mordheim Bretonians have been on the bench, and here's a sneak peak at a project I've wanted to do for a while. Warhammer 40K/Necromunda Skaven. These are a few of the "first draft" mockups while I figure out how best to manipulate the Stormvermin models to hold 40K weapons. Then I need to figure out how to "space them up" (IGuard boots as a start? I have some of those hideously deformed and oversized plastic Catachans).




I love Necromunda, but one of my main gaming buddies isn't super big on it. But he loves Skaven. So if I make him some Necromunda Skaven, maybe he'll play with us, haha. That and it seems like a fun project, since Skaven have no 40K rules and I can make them anything I want.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

It looks like the scribe has just noticed the penis.

the Skaven look great Srg

@Joyboozer once seen it cannot be unseen :(

We've been playing Mordheim, so I revisited my human mercenaries. I have two warbands of them. One Empire-themed and a second that is Bretonnian themed.

The Empire mercenaries are a mix of Empire State Troops (bodies), Dark Elves (heads), Eldar (head), Mordheim Mercenaries (weapons and bits), Bretonnians (weapons and bits). A lot of hand and weapon swaps going on here. I'm pretty satisfied with them, so they might be ready for paint. Thinking about a red/white scheme.

I'm tempted to attempt to green stuff up a shirt for the Ogre, because I want to get away from the "Bloated Mongol" look. I did manage to get the "weapon resting on his shoulder" look I wanted out of the kit after some fiddling.



The Bretonnians are a bit more "out of box", just with some converted weapons and tweaked arms for the archers. The knight was made with a standard knight torso mated to the Men at Arms command set of legs with the boots replaced with the mailed feet from a mounted knight. I wanted to make the warband a bit more thematic, but it turns out shields suck, and having a second knight in heavy armor was a huge waste of starting points for the warband.

Nice work there Sgt !

Look great. It can be hard to get motion out of some of the older fantasy kits designed for rank and file. Do you know which DE kit in particular the heads came from? Been looking for a similar one.

Yeah, I'd had some of those bits sitting around for a while.

Age of Sigmar made me sad because it killed off all those great old Fantasy kits and none of the AoS stuff really fits the Mordheim aesthetic.

The flowing hair one on the right came from the Cold Ones, and the middle one was from the Dreadspears. I just scraped and filed his ear down. The head on the left is from the Eldar Guardians.

That is the perfect Ork vehicle.

Nice work! Have you given any thoughts to kitbashing the Aberrants not that the Acolyte kit has been shown? I think the legs might work but I haven't figured out the rest of the model if I was to try and mod one myself without having to buy more DW:OK boxes.

Nice work on the Mordheim bands, I really like the Orge dude.

EDC

Time to get to work.



As far as kitbashing the Aberrants, I don't have any plans to yet, but I'll have to see what they actually do first, and what kind of kitbashinng I'd want to do with them.

About the ogre, I like him so far, but he needs work to get rid of all the Mongol elements. But now I've got other stuff to work on, so he's going to sit for a while, I'm sure.

Finally finished my Magus.

Clipped off the pope-drapes to make him look more like the classic magus models. Minor modification to the hand, and I gave him a more stern-looking head because I think it makes the model more sinister.



So the Neophyte Hybrid kit comes with a shotgun and an autogun for each model, but only one left arm for each set. So I repurposed an arm from Mordheim to fit the bill. The base model was a figure from DW:O that I wanted to re-do anyway, The other two models have some simple arm modifications to reposition the weapons.



And a nice little group shot.

Delightfully subtle kitbashes. Kudos!

Two things I like with the Neophyte kit are that the proportions are decent. I abandoned my plastic Cadians because the kit is the second worst one in the GW range. Catachans being the only plastics worse than the Cadians. Chaos Marines are probably 3rd-worst.

Because of this, the Mordheim arms work. I'm loath to use too many of them because I don't want to dip far into my stock of Mordheim bits, but it's nice that it's possible. When I'm done, I will probably go back and pilfer the shoulder and glove parts from any leftover arms I have in the Neophyte kit, and then either cut them up, or replace that Mordheim arm completely.

I first tried to replace it with an arm from the Cadian kit, but holy hell those arms are beefy and awful and awful. Did I say awful twice? Could be worse. They could be Catachan arms, which are oversized on a Space Marine body, lol.

I should do a scratchbuilt Kharn, just to demonstrate how bad the Catachan arms are and how ugly the Chaos Marines kit is. But then I'd have a scratchbuilt Kharn for no reason other than to utilize all the worst bits in my collection.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
I should do a scratchbuilt Kharn, just to demonstrate how bad the Catachan arms are and how ugly the Chaos Marines kit is. But then I'd have a scratchbuilt Kharn for no reason other than to utilize all the worst bits in my collection.

Not seeing the problem here: were you planning on doing anything else with those bits? Go on, let's see what you come up with!

I barely get around the conversions I want to do, haha.

That said, I've never been a big fan of Kharn, or the World Eaters in general. They combine all the ridiculous stupidity of the Orks, but without the humor (and expendability) to make them fun.

If I were to do Kharn, it would be a nod to the Battle of Skalathrax; the moment when he completely lost it, and went around burning everyone out of their entrenchments with a flamer. I always thought that bit of his fluff from the 2nd Edition Chaos Codex was cool.

Which, now that I think of it, I want to do. But I'm not sure I have a suitable head I'd want to pull it off.

The real question is, which arm do I leave unarmored? Right?. Or Left?


As far as why I bought the Catachans, i got them cheap and I wanted to use the legs for some IGuard conversions. It wasn't until I saw them up close that I realized everything in that kit is bad, not just the torsos, heads and arms. About the only thing I salvaged from that kit were the lasguns for my Squats. S'okay. I've wasted more money than that in the past. A drop in the bucket, lol.

Knocked out some more Tau Fire Warriors after getting my hands on the models from the Kill Team boxed set. They're the dark-gray ones, obviously. I like the Breacher helmet. Wish all the Fire Warriors had it.



Plus, my Counts-As Deathwatch using actual Deathwatch parts are taking shape.

Been a bit industrious for the last week or so, though Battlefield 1 comes out today, so I'll probably be away from the workbench for a bit, lol.

Putting some colors on my Tau. Decided on the D'yanoi Sept since their color scheme seems practical and they'll look good in contrast to my gray-trenchcoated Steel Legion. I'm way out of practice painting, so I figured I'd start with the models I care the least about. They look a'ight.



Gonna be on a painting binge here hopefully for the next few months. Knock out what's left of my Tau and Steel Legion, then the Genestealer Cultists. Want to get my "upright" Orks painted up too once I've finished the sculpting work on them.



Then eventually circle back to the Space Marines.

I've got a solid mockup for my Jetek Suberei counts-as for Deathwatch Overkill. But I forgot to get a picture of him.

Really the only model I have left to do is my Counts-As Cassius, but I don't have a good skull helmet for a Chaplain and I haven't found any reasonably priced bits/3rd party versions that catch my eye. Might have to snag an old metal chaplain and saw its head off.

Holy moly, my Orks finally have necks. About 80% done with the sculpting on the existing models, then they will be ready for painting.



I'm the slowest moving hobbyist in history.

Just want to say that your Corsairs are one of the things that brought me back to the hobby a couple of months ago really dynamic looking poses, and you really capture the irregular look of Corsair troops.

Love the Space Skaven and Orks too

Very cool and really characterful.

EDC

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
Just want to say that your Corsairs are one of the things that brought me back to the hobby a couple of months ago really dynamic looking poses, and you really capture the irregular look of Corsair troops.

Well, it looks like you've done some pretty awesome things with that inspiration, so I'm glad to have been a small part of it.

Honestly, that's the most fun part of this project; seeing what other people do with my ideas. And my favorite thing about P&M Blogs are seeing what other people come up with when converting 40K figures. Now if only I was a more disciplined painter. I get bored of painting way too fast, and I have way too many figures to paint.

Thanks man always nice to get compliments from someone much more talented than I

You and me both on the painting front. I've got 65 models painted so far (which felt like a slog!), and a further 86 waiting to be painted (with 81 more that I need to make!).

I'd definitely describe myself as a reluctant painter...

Would I be insane if I considered molding gas masks out of green stuff and guitar string for 100 or so 2nd Edition metal Cadian guardsmen?

I've got all this green stuff lying around and then they would blend in with my Steel Legion guys, too.

I was thinking that if I made a press mold to shape the outside, it wouldn't be that bad. Figure out approximately how much putty I need, slap it on their faces, shape it, trim the excess, done. Use something tubular to shape the eyelets/goggles.

The Steel Legion gas masks connect to a box filter, which would be much easier to make/mold.

No that seems like a totally reasonable thing to do....





....nutter.

The time you would spend making the gas masks you would save on not painting 100 faces!

So perfectly reasonable to me.

Sounds barmy!

Do it

just when i thought there was nothing crazier than tru scaling space marines

Well, this place is either Madness, or Sparta, and nobody has gotten kicked down a well recently.

To be fair though, I haven't actually started this project yet. I haven't actually done much of anything other than drill out some Ork gun barrels because I've been busy with other stuff. But, the idea is there.

Honestly, I think it can actually be achieved fairly quickly and painlessly.


Famous last words.

No. No metal Cadians with gas masks yet.

But, I've been fooling around with more Orks. Busted out some old Gorkamorka models (a game I bought and I think we played twice, lol), and cannibalized them for parts.

Made a Mek/Big Mek out of a Nob body. Put together some Warbikers. Put together some Lootas using a medley of parts (including an exhaust pipe from a Killa Kan). I hate the modern Loota kit with those ridiculous shoulder mounts. My Lootas have proppa Orky guns. Excessively large and unwieldy.

The rough WiPs need sculpted necks and cleanup where their legs have been modified, but my Ork warband is reaching significant numbers at this point.





With a Steel Legion officer and one of my upscaled Deathwatch Marksmen so you can see the effect of converting the Orks to stand more upright.

Looks great man just that little bit of extra height really makes them look extra intimidating next to the squishy human.

Nice work as always

I love your blog, created an account just to subscribe Have you ever painted some of these truescale marines though? I recall seeing some that (I think) you have painted, though I'm not sure if they were truescale.

Happy New Year Srg

Orcs look great.

Think I'm going to pinch those ideas to make my Nobs bigger......that sounded bad :O

Bring on more Skaven! They look great.

Even Orky guns have to make sense... ish.

Converted up some Twin-Linked Shootas for my Nobz, giving them logical(ish) secondary magazines and matching(ish) dual ejection ports. Also, I've been taking advantage of the soft plastic on the older Boyz kits to carve out the helmets and put different faces under them. Plus, even though it's way too small, I couldn't resist using sprinkling in some original late-80s Rogue Trader-era Ork Bolters.

Bring on more Skaven! They look great.

Thanks. Glad you like them. I probably will return to them. I still have another 12 unused Stormvermin bodies. I really just needed to whip up enough for a Necromunda gang to start. Then I got sidetracked on other projects. I want to eventually make them a little more 40Kish, but gotta do some delving into the bits bin to see what I can do with that. The problem is that Age of Sigmar killed off all the fantastic bits you could get from the old WFB, so finding a reasonable deal on unassembled kits/bits is much harder.

Think I'm going to pinch those ideas to make my Nobs bigger

Girls love bigger Nobz. Actually though, I don't do much with the Nobz other than move their heads up. The Nobz bodies stand more upright naturally.

I love your blog, created an account just to subscribe Have you ever painted some of these truescale marines though

Welcome aboard. I have painted them, but my painting skills are nothing exciting (I can put colors on and stay between the lines), so I keep the project log focused on the modeling aspect.

Sgt, your blog is awesome. I've been interested in starting a truescale army for a while now, and with the help of your well constructed "how to", I've built the first two, ready to paint.

Keep up the good work, I've subscribed to see where you take it.

Thanks. Feel free to share a picture of yours if you don't plan on making your own log. I always like seeing what other people can come up with if they were inspired by my project.

I've started my own log, with a few pics to start. I've moved on to painting these 2 until I have more cash to do a full tactical squad.

Link here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/713946.page

Looking forward to seeing more of your projects unfold.

Literally just slapped together a new Van Saar ganger using one of those fancy AdMech stub carbines the other day, and they announce a new Necromunda video game.

http://www.necromunda-underhivewars.com/

I'm so in.

 JeffyP wrote:
Bring on more Skaven! They look great.

Never realized I didn't post the rest of them. I only did a small group to form the core of a Necromunda gang for my buddy. But I did pick up a batch of Blood Bowl Skaven Linemen just to see what they'd look like converted for 40K. They turned out decent. I still need to go back and polish them up. The weapons are a mix of Imperial Guard (Catachan on the R, Cadian on the L) and the 3rd Edition Dark Eldar kit. Turns out those awful Dark Eldar kits have some use (aside from a handful of parts O. The Van Saar guy up above has Dark Eldar donor hands, haha.



Eventually I'll post up that Deff Dredd with the articulated rotating waist. I am still fiddling with some of its smaller details.

Here are the original 8 that were based on Stormvermin bodies.



Have a compiled article about them here on my blog: 40K Skaven Conversions

Yes Space Skaven!

Remember to drop by Mech Ratfink for all your maintenance. Guaranteed cheaper than Mechanicus!



Inspired by yours of course

Very cool space skaven dude

Are the autoguns from the gene stealer cult kits?

I do love me some spaven.

The autoguns and Heavy Stubber are actually from the Dark Vengeance cultists. I bought a bunch of them on the cheap a while back. Though I have little doubt the Genestealer Cult Neophyte kit would provide plenty of usable weapons. I just used most of them for my actual Genestealer Cultists.

In fact, if I were to make an entire army out of the Skaven, it would seem like the Genestealer Cult rules would probably be the best stand-in, since Space Skaven would be sneaky dickbags. For now they're just going to be Necromunda stand-ins because my buddy loves Skaven and it will encourage him to play Necromunda with us.

Looks like the Stormvermin kit came back. I had thought it was dead because it disappeared for a while. That's good news for anyone who might want to tread down my path of madness and duplicate the work. I like the Blood Bowl figures aside from Giant Pauldrons (which is, arguably, 40K, even if it isn't my favorite part of the 40K aesthetic, lol), but it seems like you'd run out of poses pretty quickly. Mixing in Stormvermin arms could do the trick. I'll probably do that with the other three linemen figures I still have.

BTW, I love the Ratmech. Sometimes I wish I had a broader bitbox that would let me do more figures like that for an Inq28 theme. There are so many cool ideas out there for that setting. But for now I've been working more on small armies for 40K, as I try to adapt the WW2 combat system Chain of Command for use with 40K figures. And occasionally just playing small points battles with the current 40K rules.

Yeah if you're looking for non-mutated Autoguns and Shotguns then there's three of each in the Neophyte kit, one of each being one-handed

I'm flattered you like my efforts! Your models have been a big inspiration for me love the name 'Ratmech' too perfect

I'd absolutely love to see your take on the whole Inq28 aesthetic a man of your talents would have a whale of a time

Being not-British, the Brexit was a great thing for my newest acquisition. Can't get Perry minis at a discount on Ebay too often, and definitely not in any kind of salvageable used condition.

However, I made the mistake of using Wayland Games, who took over a month to tell me I was probably going to have to wait another month. Firestorm Games got them in my hands in 8 days.



Not sure how interested people are in historicals, but I find the Wars of the Roses fascinating. So many interesting historical personalities, and a crazy back story to 30 or so years of the English killing the crap out of one another for the throne, resulting in what was effectively the death of an entire royal bloodline, the rise of the Tudors, and the start of what people tend to think of as the Renaissance period in Britain. So much revenge, betrayal and unchivalrous behavior.

This will be my first real foray into historicals as a conversion project. I flirted with doing Romans, but ended up being pretty disappointed with the quality and scaling issues with Warlord's Early Imperial/Late Republican Romans.

I'm still working on 40K stuff. Well, sorta. I've mostly been playing Conan Exiles for the last couple weeks during what was normally the small amount of hobby time I have. But 40K stuff isn't going off the table.

So this week marks the 5 year anniversary of this slow-progressing, meandering, expensive trip I call a project log. It's come a long way from True Scale Space Marines, and eventually ended up with at least some test models from pretty much every 40K race, including ones I wasn't ever a big fan of originally like Tau and Eldar. I want to thank everyone who has participated with feedback, and more the people who saw stuff that I had done and made their own creations with those ideas. Some of you have made some fantastic stuff, and I'm glad I played a small part in it. I wasn't the first person to do a project like this, but my project has had such high visibility, both in the chronological record here, and from the articles on my wordpress blog, that the scourge of True or "Tall" Scale Space Marines continues to plague tabletops everywhere.

While it may seem like I'm in no rush (which is true), I'm always thinking about new things to do, which is probably why so much I start goes unfinished, haha.

So, what am I working as this project about 32mm Space Marines reaches its 5th Anniversary?

15th Century English from the Wars of the Roses, of course.



Man these guys are small and fiddly. No wonder Heroic Scale is so popular. But it's a new and fun challenge to work with figures that require fairly close attention to historical accuracy.

More on this figure as it comes along, as it is intended to represent a specific historical personality. It's actually the second draft of its concept, as I play around with the parts available and trying to sculpt small details like bevors and raised helmet visors.

At any rate, once again, thanks to everyone who has looked, commented, and borrowed from my project. Guess we'll see where I am in another 5 years.

Yesterday, I look at my site traffic on my blog...



Oh. GW announced releasing new taller Space Marines, lol.

Other than that, I have been mostly working on my Wars of the Roses, which nobody seems to care about on Dakka, which is why I've been pretty quiet for the last few months, haha.

Love those War of the Roses figs mate, always fancied doing some myself as a dedicated Yorkist
excellent work !

Ahh, well those guys are destined to be liveried archers for the Cliffords, and thus servants of the rightful king.

Hopefully I can get the rest of the paint on them soon. I've been traveling a bit the last few weeks.

Had Litko Game Accessories make up some custom tray bases for me so I can use these figs for both 2x1 ranked stands in A Coat of Steel, and individually on 18mm washers for something like Lion Rampant or Sharp Practice.

Pretty impressed with the results.

Nice base, do they have to be square for you're rule set? They'd look pretty cool on round, tho wouldn't rank uo so well I suppose.

The gentleman who provides the overwhelming majority of the figures has his on Litko's 40x40x3, with the intent of using them for Coat of Steel. So I needed to make sure they were based equivalently..

Then, I realized I'd never have anywhere near enough figures to play a regular battle, so I'd want to individually base mine so I could play skirmish rules (30 or so guys on a side) with some of my local friends.

I don't really think Coat of Steel has any hard and fast requirements for base sizes. They probably need to be rectangular though, because it relies on rankings and base frontages. But I'm sure people play with just about anything they want. I know one of the guys who is fairly well known in the WotR gaming sphere has all of his individually based because he thinks it looks better (I'd agree) and he doesn't mind moving all the guys individually.

These aren't mine, btw They belong to a guy who goes by Captain Blood and is one of the better known 15th Century Medieval guys over at Lead Adventure.





But that's a little insane.

This is some phenomenal work!

Sorry about the wait. The clowns I ordered them from forgot to ship them for a week, lol.

Because I'm sure this is the question on everyone's mind now:

So any plans to upsize the Primarus?

Either you were unbelievably accurate or GW been round your house and"borrowed" your spec. They are so close it is ridiculous.

And second Whaley, you going to have to truescale the new boys, they is bigger and better after all.

 Camkierhi wrote:
Either you were unbelievably accurate or GW been round your house and"borrowed" your spec. They are so close it is ridiculous.

It wouldn't be the first time...

So any plans to upsize the Primarus?

Probably not. I don't really like the 8th Edition Nufluff. It doesn't inspire me. In fact, a lot of it is downright silly, even by 40K standards. If I get any Primaris Marines, it will probably be to use as normal Marines (and I'll just swap out their rifles for regular ones and use Mk7 heads). I actually like the aesthetics of the Primaris models (aside from the flying dudes and the Gravis armor), so with a little modification (such as trimming that weird knee pad) they can probably just go into my regular collection. Maybe as Veterans or something.

Not 40K related, but I figured some people would be interested in what I've been up to. I want to thank everyone who has been on this journey with me. While I don't do too much 40K related modeling anymore, I still had a ton of fun with the True Scale project, and seeing everyone else's contributions inspired by my thread and blog. Anyway, rewinding 39,600 years, or thereabouts, I take you to 15th century England:


After getting intrigued by Coat of Steel and the Perry plastics about a year and a half ago, I set about to doing up some of my own. I became fascinated by John Clifford because his game traits were "Audacious" and "Bloodthirsty" and when I looked him up on Wikipedia, the first picture was of a guy about to stab a child to death. Very well then. This guy needed a 28mm figure of his own, and the model we were using was actually in the heraldry of Thomas (his father).

It turned out John Clifford was even more fascinating in real life and pivotal to several major events in the first portion of the Wars of the Roses (1455-61). Almost a quintessential character for the time period. Violent, merciless, and driven by revenge.

But, I don't know how to do anything simple. I wanted my figures to be based for Coat of Steel (40x40, 3 figure) and individually. I also get bored of just assembling models off the sprue. I want every model to be a little unique, and to stand out. Especially any character model.

So here is the journey so far. I still need to finish basing and a matte varnish (darned hobby stores were out so I've ordered it) plus some little touchups. I'm a mediocre painter, but I'm patient, at least. Then I just need transfers for the wyvern livery badges.

So I wanted to sculpt on more bevors, and ones that looked proper. Too many models without face protection in a world of stabby and pokey bits. Very difficult for the Perry models to do with separate heads, so Green Stuff it was.



I later decided I also needed a plackart on my Clifford and the body I'd chosen didn't have one. More Green Stuff. Clifford himself is 11 separate pieces, plus three sculpted additions.



I also added a sash to the standard bearer, and gave him a right angry looking fellow with a warhammer to round out the command base:



Clifford’s war axe is a custom, cut down from one of the poleaxes, with the hand repositioned so the head of the axe droops slightly, imparting a sense of weight for the top heavy weapon.




I still need to paint the checkers on his sash. Pity me, I somehow chose the guy with white livery coats (argh!) and blue and yellow checkers on his heraldry (double argh). Could a Clifford retinue be any harder to paint? Guess he could some kind of quartered white and yellow livery or something.

Then I strung all the bows with thin gauge wire.





Finally I got custom laser cut bases from LITKO, and mounted everything on 19mm washers. The nice side effect is these are very bottom heavy and don't topple over easily.





Anyhow, hope you guys enjoyed. I'll update this topic when they are fully completed, but since I published my article on Clifford today, I figured I would post this here.

I've also written up an article with a brief history of John Clifford on my blog if anyone is interested in the historical personality behind this project:
https://veteransergeant.wordpress.com/2019/03/13/john-clifford-wars-of-the-roses/

Great to see you and welcome home.

Nice work on the tin men, we all love knights, that is our fascination with SM just knights in tech.

These look ace, really like the guy with the Warhammer too.

So, I've been out of action for a while. Kinda burned out on 40K in 8th Edition after they tossed the canon in the trash and resurrected Guilliman and introduced Primaris (because how else do you keep selling more Space Marines?), etc.

Went back to my first love for a little while, historicals. I created a unit of 28mm Perry Wars of the Roses for and wrote a historical article on John, 9th Baron Clifford. A rather fascinating man, if you fancy a little light history about blood feuds, revenge and murder.

But what brought me back? Funny enough, the decision to start selling off the hundreds of dollars in miniatures I had sitting around that I was probably never going to get around to. I still don't like 40K, but I do enjoy all the "small games" like Space Hulk, Necromunda, Deathwatch: Overkill, etc. So I bought the components for Blackstone Fortress on the cheap on EBay (helped to have a $5 coupon for Ebay too), and I'm going to dive into the collection to fill out the ranks. I actually love the miniature from Blackstone Fortress, but I just don't need them.

So here's a sneak preview of the donor figures I've decided on for proxies. I still need to dig through the collection and find my old Ministorum Priest.

I have Eldar rangers, but I kinda like the idea of substituting a Sniper Scout for that model. I'll give him a sword on his back or something.




And yeah, that old Rogue Trader dreadnought fits on a 32mm base. Mostly. Sorta. it, I'ma do it anyway.

Glorious retro goodness! Looks like this'll be fun!

What's this? First new 40K model in 2 years?

I don't usually post early versions of models, but here's my Garran Branatar proxy for Deathwatch Overkill. Moved the head up and the arms down to make the suit wearable by a human shaped person. He's just held together by tac putty right now and the green stuff is just in its initial structural form on the collar and waistline.

Base model is an AoBR terminator I've had sitting around for years. Not totally sure where the heavy flamer is from. Sentinel kit maybe? Melta is an inferno pistol from the Sanguinary Guard.

Looks like a dread flamer possibly. Looking forward to more.

Been working on some Genestealer Cultists to stand in for the Traitor Guard in Blackstone Fortress (going to replace everything in BSF with Genestealers). But then I said to myself "I really need to do that Chaplain Cassius proxy I've been thinking about for like a year."



So this happened.

That's a rather sporty looking terminator! Really nice work.

So the mad Colonel Drake's retinue is coming along.
 

 
Sergeant Taddeus
 

 
 
Trooper Vorne, admittedly the easiest and least ambitious of the proxies
 

 
Navigator Locarno (still very WIP, obviously)
 

 
Drake's personal bodyguard, the Kroot Hunter Grehk
 

 
Troopers Rein and Raus
 

 
 
Imperial Robot UR-205 needed another bath.
 

 
And finally, the mad Colonel himself. I liked that shorty bolter carbine so much, I made another one.  But split in half and filed down to be more human sized with the smaller bolt pistol barrel.
 

 
I had started on Amalynn Shadowguide using an old metal Eldar ranger I had, but didn't think it was dynamic enough, so she's getting redone.

Nice replacements all. Well, hard to see the metal-man in his bath, but nevertheless...

I'd like to say cheers Veteran Sergeant. Your conversions are always inspiring. So far this thread has lead me to make my own truescale marine, and then came the primais marine craze, and asked myself: How big are they really? I mean it's easy to work out dimensions, but how big are they really?

Spoiler: Quite big.

Took forever to get most of the paint off, but here is UR 209, ready to stomp into Blackstone Fortress

Old school dreadnought?

Quality conversion right there!

Really love the chaplain from upthread. Need to steal that axe idea.

BSF guys are also looking great.

Nice work on the cannon arm, fits in perfectly.

OldMate wrote:Old school dreadnought?

Yep. I was quite happy to finally have a use for that model. Took forever to get the old caked on paint off of him. Eventually just gave up, but got most of it.

monkeytroll wrote:Nice work on the cannon arm, fits in perfectly.

Yeah, it took a while to figure out how I wanted to do it. Only cost a Sentinel Multilaser, a claw off an Ork Battlewagon, and the Assault Cannon from a Dark Angel Terminator.

 inmygravenimage wrote:
Quality conversion right there!

Thanks. Still needs some polishing and decoration but I like the initial look of it.

Nice conversion. Looks like it'd make a good sized attack bot.

Don’t forget the toothy grin when you repaint him. All RT dreads need a good smile!

I agree, a shark mouth would be badass.

Hadn't thought of the Shark Mouth, but I agree, that's really the only acceptable answer.


So, the Hostiles in my Blackstone Fortress are going to be Genestealer Cult, so that they can have commonality with the minis for Space Hulk and Deathwatch Overkill. For most figures, it's an easy swap. Neophytes for Traitor Guard, Acolytes for Beastmen, Magus for Rogue Psykers, etc. For a few, I need to be more creative.

The only models I specifically bought for Blackstone Fortress were the Spindle Drones (forthcoming) and the Ur Ghuls. And since they're biological, I've decided they can be infected by Genestealers too.

Still kinda working on them, but I was pleased to see the 1sr/2nd Gen Acolyte arms actually fit fairly seamlessly with the Ur Ghul bodies, and then I just gave them the Ur Ghul claws back. Might give one or two of them some Hybrid claw hands. Haven't decided. First Try green stuff head ridges look okay, and I think by the third one, I figured it out, so I'll go back and redo the others.

Ooh that's very creepy. Nice work.

Yeah, they work well. Haven't really looked at my Blackstone figures yet, but I'll make a note on the acolyte arms

Very impressive conversion work here! Cassius looks great, and that short bolter design is lovely. Might have to borrow it at some point

Nice work on the opposition. Creative.

What? More Space Marines?

Plowing along with WiPs. The Assault Marines for Deathwatch Overkill, as well as redoing a flamer Marine for Space Hulk.

Model Count Left:
DW:O "Dark Angel"
DW:O "White Scar"
BSF: Spindle Drone x3
BSF: "Chaos Marine"
Genestealer Patriarch

Getting close.

As always, excellent work. Its good to see you’re still plugging away at these.

Nearly finished with the assembly phase. Decided plasma pistols are boring and I had a spare Volkite weapon. Since everything in Deathwatch Overkill is abstracted anyway, he became the "Dark Angel" just with a roman style Mainz pattern gladius/spatha like the rest of my troops.

Deathwatch: Overkill models are on 32mm bases. I left the Space Hulk Only models on 25mm since that will make it easier to fit them in the Space Hulk squares.



"Lefty" officially becomes the proxy for the Chainfist in Space Hulk with his handy Lascutter by his side.




Just a handful of models on the Hostiles side to do now. Been putting off the Spindle Drones, haha. The first one was so fiddly. Letting him fully cure before I clean up all the thumb prints and stuff.

Had to take a long break, but now I'm back on the paint table, finishing the models for Space Hulk/Deathwatch Overkill/Blackstone Fortress. I've finally finished all the models, so no excuse to not paint them.



Also, since we are restarting our Heroes of Aturi Cluster campaign, I got some 3D Printed scale-corrected A-Wings because I didn't like how massive the FFG A-Wing was. I had also always wanted to paint some Green Squadron ones based on the old Micro Machines toy I've had for like 25 years. So this solved both problems.

Green 4 checking in! Very nice indeed!

OK, that little A-wing is adorable!

Fairly pleased with the final product. So tiny, lol.

Slapped a magnet on it so it can zoom around with the rest of them. I know magnets are fairly common for X-Wing these days, but I have my OG tutorial here if you're considering it and want to know how. It's extremely easy, and cheap.

X-Wing Magnets Tutorial

Excellent stuff. Very, very dynamic.

Finished the second Tiny A-Wing, so the one above has a wingman now.

I'm slowly plodding through painting the Space Hulk/Blackstone Fortress miniatures, but of course, new projects.

I'm in the process of writing a full length one shot adventure for the Alien RPG/Aliens Adventure Game/Mothership for eventual publication, but I need miniatures, because, I dunno, I need miniatures. Oh, also, my Aliens and Colonial Marine minis are going to pull double-duty for the Nemesis boardgame too. Minis are Prodos AvP, with Mantic GCPS soldiers from Star Saga recruited to play the Sino/Neo-Soviet UPP soldiers if needed. Was happy the scales matched up pretty good since the Prodos Marines are a pretty rare 32mm True Scale.



Also, more historicals. But I also love Legend of the Five Rings, so, how about a historical/fantasy double feature? Six warbands, about 100 models total, so I can run mini campaigns of Ronin/Daisho/Test of Honour/Bushi no Yume. Lion, Crab, Crane, Scorpion, Bandits, and Shadowlands. Possible some Unicorn eventually. Mix of old Clan War metals, Warlord plastics, and Kensei metals, and some randos from other ranges. The goblin (bakemono) is a Deep Cuts Pathfinder goblin.

Oh, loving the L5R goodies - super excited. Great game, great setting.

Nice work Veteran Sergeant.

Cheers,

CB

Color testing. Dark brown drybrushed over flat black with a black glaze on the skull.

Nasty. Very very creepy and little bit sticky.

And the Colonial Marines to fight my Aliens. I broke down and bought Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps, but I don't like GF9's models so I'll probably Ebay them and stick with the Prodos figs.

A couple pose fixes (far left and middle models), some added pouches and details.

Added cabling to the headset and the M56 Smartgun with wire.

So, at long last, I'm back to Warhammer 40K models. Or, at least, Games Workshop models.

About a year or so ago, I bought a copy of Blackstone Fortress and its Escalation expansion without the models, for about $25 each. I'd started this project, but set it aside a couple times to work on other stuff. Fifty-plus custom models are a lot to do.

S, let me present to you the first completed members of my proxy crew of Explorers, led by the archaeotech-obsessed rogue Imperial Guard colonel Janus Drake, his Kroot bodyguard, the combat construct UR-209, a pair of crafty Squat troopers, the Stormtrooper sergeant Taddeus with his gun-servitor, and the insane Specialist Vorne.

Beautifully painted, especially UR-209!

Okay, calling this project "Finished."

Colonial Marines and Aliens for use with Alien: The Roleplaying Game, Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps, and Aliens vs Predator: The Hunt Begins.

Full blog article is here:
https://veteransergeant.wordpress.com/2021/07/30/united-states-colonial-marines/

Section Sergeant (Apone) with his Communications Specialist, the drone operator (Corporal Ibarra)



Detail on Ibarra and his drone




TheSquads






The Platoon Commander and his staff





And, of course, the Aliens for them to fight







Detail on the motion tracker

Great camo, and I really like your palette for the xenos. Looks ace.

Nice true scale project. Making good progress. Also, wow there's so much stuff here to see.

 inmygravenimage wrote:
Great camo, and I really like your palette for the xenos. Looks ace.

Yeah, I kind of experimented with the Aliens. The suits and puppets used in the first three movies were brown and black, so I wanted to replicate that look.

Basecoated them black, then used a Vallejo Burnt Umber with a somewhat heavy drybrush. The Burnt Umber barely shows, but mutes the black, then I did another lighter drybrush in a lighter brown tone, Flat Brown. On the Infant, I did some spot drybrush with Cork.

So it's really just drybrushed layers of brown over a black base.

Very nice. I'm a huge fan of vj burnt umber, it's a go to hereabouts.

Okay, so back to Blackstone Fortress with the rest of my Explorers

I like your squat Daedalosus. Excellent conversions all around.

Woah! Those are some impressive conversions, really love Taddeus and Vorne!

It would be irresponsible to own Squats, have an opportunity to use Squats, and not do it.

Though while Rein and Raus from the first group are actual Squat models even making the sniper rifle out of an RT-era lasgun, Daedalosus actually has no Squat parts, being made from a Space Marine vehicle crew torso, Cadian legs, Star Saga Ogan Helkkare, Kharadron blimp pilot head, and a gun bit I found in the parts bin at my FLGS. I couldn't find any donor models that fit quite what I wanted to do with him, so I just made one from scratch.

These are looking squat tastic! May I recommend SM scout parts for making squats, especially the arms, they work pretty well.

I actually have more real Squats than I'll probably ever use again. A bunch of metal ones, some assembled plastics, and a bag with another 14 still-unassembled ones.

I just didn't have one that made a good Tech-priest. The SM torso had the AdMech cog on the chest, which is why I used it, building the rest of his back with green stuff. Then from there I just chopped up a plastic Cadian radio operator and took his legs, mouthpiece and helmet camera thing.

Finally put a blog article together on these guys, including the newest member, Gut-Fred Montbonk, the Ogryn "crusader." Custom Blackstone Fortress Explorers

Wow, love these alternatives to the Blackstone Fortress heros, very cool!