Its no surprise to anyone who's followed my work that I love guard armies.
My last one (the 111st royston rifles) was an experiment in simple basecoat and wash/highlight painting on highly converted models.
I think it worked out pretty good all told.
however.
looking back at it now I can see that although intended to be a generic go-to guard army with ties to classic cadians, steel legion, dkok, elysian droptroops and a fair degree of idea poaching from everyone's favourite rubricist, a certain mr Apologist, all in one army, it does indeed reference all these but to an effect that washes out a specific regimental style in a sea of mixed-weapons, armour and a lot of flectarn fatigues...
And in truth, although t'was indeed intended as a quick-job paint scheme, I know can do far, far better with very little extra effort as far as painting is concerned these days.
my carcharodons are slowly reaching a natural end as far as the project is concerned, I've touched on pretty much all the originaly intended things I wanted to cover in the project; better-scaled marines in various armour marks, rt inspired reiver beakies, palanite scouts, better bikes and classic rhino and of course the current project of the heavy intercessor termies, all with the classic retro and rogue trader and second edition references within.
my planned fallen angels have hit a dead end creatively and I may or may not return to this as time goes on.
so what to do next then?
more guard of course!
I figured I would choose a single aspect/design-cue and stick to it more solidly this time round.
Also, its a perfect opportunity to utilise all the new techniques and skills I've sharpened up on since doing the sharks and the fallen one, mixing it in with what I did on the 111st RR's and see whats occuring.
so I needed a theme and went for the grimest-of-the-grim trench-warfare setting as this meant, with clever stylings, the army could be used as loyalist or rebellious guard depending on how I was feeling at the time and whomsoever my opponent may be...
so dkok then?
HA! don't make me laugh bitterly...
I know I said I just got a new job but it doesn't pay THAT much LOL. who's does!?
no seriously its indeed the perfect style but is rather overdone and in truth I've never been wowed by fw's resin quality on infantry if I'm honest. never got all the fuss.
still anvil on the other hand? yes please. the regiments range is a thing of beauty and it's interconnectivity makes it the obvious choice for avid converters.
I'm going to go for a simple short greatcoat and the brodie-helmet-gasmask heads as its a nice mix. I really dig (pun intended) the british look it gives, a design cue that gw seem to have overlooked in the guard ranges over the years.
think about it;
steel legion - ww2 german paratroops
dkok - ww1 french/german hybrids
cadians (classic metal) - ww2 us troops (the plastic ones are clearly starship trooper inspired)
catachan - nam/predator muscle-men?
valhallan - ww2 soviet
mordian - traffic wardens?
look, I could go on but you get the point I'm sure...
anyway this:
will be the generic troop look.
I will be adding lots of kit and trench warfare stuff from gw though. same for the weapons these will be imperial and a few bits from the gsc range (not as much as the 111st did though, just sgts and officers). I'll be adding subterainian excavation kit as I did on my royston rifles engineers but instead of having explicit engineers units within the army I'm going for a simple riflemen's company that instead has trench/sapper design elements across the board.
due partly to the fact that ive just been informed by one of my new colegues that gw have pretty much ditched all/many of the specialist dkok units over to 'legend' units. making future game support somewhat unlikely. considering how long its likely for me to take to get anything playable sized on this project thats not a good start so I'm playing it safe and keepiing it simple. just as with the space-sharks...
the colourscheme will not exclusively reflect british ww2 though. thats where I'll be taking a bit from the germans again...
another idea for this army is to only use current paints in the citadel range, allowing for dead paints to be easily replaced as the project continues.
as I've not got the resin yet (hell, its not even on order yet!), and to make this opening post more than just a mass of rambling text, Ive dug out an old steel legion I had unpainted and given the scheme a dry run:
as you can see I've gone for the classic muted greens and browns you expect from guard but in more detail and coherance than I've ever managed to conjour up before on a guard mini.
instead of the boring old plain kahki fatigues of the british trencher's I've elected to go for germanic camo scheme again, this time pea-dot not flectarn.
flectarn was great for the other army as it is tecnically a more modern camo but has a retro feel to it that suited the loose theme of the royston boys that would swing violently between ww2 and modern warfare in the minitures among the squads.
this time I wanted a dowdier brown scheme with accents of green, not t'other way round and as such peadot is ideal.
the colours are simple.
here's a basic lowdown on the process for those wanting to emulate it.
base the coat in steel legion drab. (how appropriate, eh?)
then it time to go dotty, equally dot over the basecoat with the following paints, overlapping and joining some dots together into coudly blobs as you progress, keep the paint as thin as you would for highlighting, you want colour not texture :
deathworld forest (this will hardly show at this stage but is needed for variation later on, its why we do it first as its easily overlooked when applying it)
Waaagh flesh
Loren forest
cadian fleshtone (yes you read that right, trust me go look at real pea-dot if you dont belive me)
abaddon black
now, you want to grab some zandri dust and highlight all the edges and creases going over the camo too as if its all just the same plain steel legion drab underneath.
also add some areas of scratches and weathering around collars, cuffs, elbows and pocket areas too, try to keep the scratches +/- going in the same direction in bunches.
this is to emulate the fabric wear that has rubbed the camo-stain away somewhat, revealing the plain kahki material neath it.
yes, I am aware that I've asked you to highlight the thing before you've even washed it. this is intentional so while you're at it,
base the helmet (and any other armour areas on another model) in waaagh flesh and highlight/chip/scratch it with loren forest followed by a lighter highlight of deathworld forest.
the mask is basecoated loren forest and highlighted with deathworld forest and deathguard green.
the bedroll (or some larger pockets or "soft" kit if you want on another model) is castellan green highlighted with deathworld forest and deathguard green
brown leather
(this can be applied two different ways across a mini and is ideal for belts pockets and holsters too, feel free to swap this about across the army. it won't effect the overall unified look. but will add some contrast and character to induvidual models)
on this one, the light leather on the main belt and webbing is done with mournfang brown highlighted/scratched with steellegion drab and zandri dust.
the dark leather on the gloves and gogglestrap is done with rhinox hide also highlighted/scratched with steellegion drab and zandri dust.
the grey plastic/bakelite grips on knives and pistolgrips/stocks etc are done with skavenblight dinge highlighted with mechanicus standard grey and dawnstone.
do the same greys on the trou. or if you prefer you could also do the trousers as the bedroll was painted if you prefer green to grey... both work fine as far as the scheme goes.
the black leather on the boots are simple abaddon black base with highlights and scratches in skavenblight dinge followed by mechanicus standard grey and dawnstone to the top edges only. from the bottom up drybrush rhinox hide to emulate mud/filth.
metal-work is simple 50/50 leadbelcher/abaddon black base. folowed by nuln oil wash (gun only, leave the buckles and goggle-rims etc for now)
flesh is simple ratskin flesh base, follwed by a second base of cadian fleshtone. then pick out the eyes using asministratum grey and abaddon black and highlight the skin with cadian fleshtone mixed with a little white incrementally to taste.
the shoulder badge is abaddon black with a simple skavenblight dinge highlight for the disc, the lightning bolt is just a simple base of mephiston red. thats all
the highlights might look plenty odd at this stage. do not fret. the next step is the magic one.
now wash the entire thing (minus gun) in 70/30 agrax earthshade nuln oil wash
(this is not really a true ratio of what I use I actually use 2.5ml of nuln oil put in a 24ml agrax earthshade pot. what ratio is that anyway? I'm a complete spaz with maths and ratios. anyway thats what I use all the time for this so I always have a pot pre-mixed. In fact, I never use agrax on its own anymore... this was the closest I could get to devlan mud using the current citadel range)
once dry the highlights will have blended everso gently with the undercoats and bases creating a beautiful transition between the two.
now you can simply go back over any bits you want to re highlight with the final highlight colour used from each stage respectively.
this is especially vital of the highlight and weathering on the jacket with the zandri dust.
this time around you can do it everso more slightly than before, the neat highlight colour appearing as an even lighter colour on itself in the wake of the heavy wash phase.
simply highlight the lightning bolt on the badge with plain mephiston red over itself again.
use neat leadbealcher (I've used boltgun metal here, but I've lodas of that left but leadbelcher would be fine) to chip and highlight the metalwork.
while you're at this, you can also feel free to add some tiny metal scratches to the helmet or other amour edges as you see fit but I've not on this one.
abaddon black the goggle lenses and go over them in high gloss varnish.
base of choice and he's done!
I'll admit now the base on this was an afterthought, I'd much rather have done the bases with greenstuff soil with cork rocks and crackle effects and all that as on my space sharks but this was only ever a test mini so this simple flock, leaf and grass was all he'll get.
metalwork is a bit lacklustre too but as I say, this was not the focus on this model... its all about nailing the other parts of the scheme.
the next lot in resin will be better, I'm sure!
so more soon?
I sure hope so or making this whole thread was a real waste of time LOL
Anvil Industry are great - I’ve used so many pieces amongst my Flexberg infantry already. A dedicated project would be glorious!
I’ve no doubt your efforts are going to be excellent, are you aiming for platoon strength initially?
I’d love to do another Guard project... Must stay strong and try and finish the last one first!? And then it’s a question of Anvil Industry? Pig Iron Productions? Wargames Atlantic? Sigh....
I'm using Anvil for the arms on my troopers. They are a really great company!
I think your paint scheme is very striking and can't wait to see an army of them.
thanks guys. good to have some fans already! as such I've decided to share some wip shots.
So my first batch of stuff from anvil arrived and I decided to get stuck into the project.
Did I stick to what I said and create a nice even squad of riflemen in the appropriate uniforms with the appropriate kit?
did I, funt!
hell no, at the advice of my surpervisor at work, I went straight in for kill-team-esque harden veteran squad.
I had been chatting with him about my intentions and he was convinced, looking at my previous endeavours, that I'd get bored or tied down in misery with reams of infantry with no narrative behind the models.
he reminded me the beauty of kill-team squads is that you can condense and coaless all of those ideas for the army all in one squad. Allowing for higher quality and less quantity.
I took this idea on board some, going for an initial five man hardened veteran squad, armed and kitted out with appropriately trench-fightery stuff.
this way if I still felt like doing more after, I still can.
A descision also made more vital after the idiocy of forgeting to order rifles to go on the models I'd already ordered, DOH!
I figured I'd cobble something together then remembered the sprues and stuff I had left over from the royston-rifles project coupled with the palanites and gsc atalan jackals gear left over from the space-shark-scouts...
looking at the gsc leftovers I had loads of stuff I could use for that industrial/trench theme I so wanted on the backpacks and kit.
also the the pump-shotgun from the bikes was a must as it just screams ww1/ww2 trenchgun...
so first up:
Ive decided to adopt the little trick of altering the 'ground' on the base to emphasize the desired pose somewhat as I did on the heavy intercessor/termies I had recently completed. I've found it works real-well on guard, better than I'd thought it would to be honest.
the first of the two has the aforementioned gsc-atalan-jackal shotgun, the backpack is an ogryn pouch with a pickaxe head from the ig tank sprue grafted to a goliath grenade shaft. the smallpocket/bullets are from the dw sprue and the grenade can be found from orlocks or the stormtrooper kit.
The second has the gsc crowbar from the bikers and, as it looked kinda huge, I went for a two handed pose with some real menace.
as he was now unable to hold a gun, I chose the biker bag with the pump-shotty in it, shaving and re-sculpting the bag with a knife to remove the embossed cult icon.
the dagger is cadian.
the obligitory breach loading grenade launcher. yes, although a staple of the vietnam conflict era, the dkok range has made this fit in to the early industrial-war setting with ease. Who was I to argue?
Again pillaging the gsc-bikers sprue, this was was carefully trimmed to blend the muzzleguard and the body to the stock of an anvil rifle arm-set.
Its about 40% bigger than the anvil breach-loader but I rather like that. it makes it feel more like official gw guard than 3rd party, and thats the intent on these... the backpack is predominantly a heavy intercessor pocket-bundle with a cadian knife and grenade added. the bandolier of grenades are a trimmed down set of 'shells' from the ogryn sprue. (I'd used the gsc ones on one of my heavy intercessors and although I had anvil nades they looked tiny!)
So next I decided to tackle the rifle issue.
I had a few nihilis lassers from the van-saar kit knocking about and thought of those.
using the mag assembly of a standard lasgun (cadian,catachan whatever) on it's side attached to the anvil rifle arms stock, then simply graft the nihilis on that, creating a lookalike to the german fg42 paratroop rifle (or sten if you prefer) that also has the sideways mag variation.
In truth it worked excellently but felt far too large and also far too high-tech for my liking.
I figured I needed a simple rifle look not too far away from the dkok's long rifle. but I wanted something with a lot of wood on it, surrounding the barrel more.
I should have got some of the bolt-action rifles from anvil as they are ideal proxies for a lee-enfield or the like, with a bit of tweaking could look ideal.
thus:
I imagine this working as a semi auto-rifle with the bolt mechanism working to release the mag...
(I will be doing this once my second anvil delivery arrives, I've ordered in dribs and drabs as my ebay sales are the exclusive revenue for this project at present, so If I don't sell, I can't buy)
why not use the anvil phase carbines? well In truth its too 'third party' looking.
All imperial official lasguns in gw's 40k ranges have the same muzzle and magazine style despite the other changes to stock, etc. so I figured to get this to look how I want it, like an official gw regiment, using the standard mag and muzzle is a make or break caveat. end of.
that will cost me I'm sure but is vital for the effect I'm after.
so then, what to do with all the nihilis ones?
well I discovered I had also some victoria lamb leg sets left over as well as some anvil heavyarmour torsos...
hmmm:
perfect to represent some Storm-Troopers!
essentially a superior remake of the royston rifles 'dark-eyes' grenadiers, these would allow me to use up the heavy torsos, vikky lamb legs and the nihilis lassers as hotshot rifles. they'll look a lot more high tech and chunkier than the regular rifles and as such perfect for the role.
the lighter fatigues on the legs instead of greatcoat suggest that the guys need more mobility and speed, approprate for shock-troops and the heavy torsos are the ideal representation of carapace armour.
this is also the perfect place to use the brodie heads without gasmasks on the sprue up too as the respirators are too long to fit within the gorget of the armour.
all greatstuff.
simple cadian grenade and intercessor pocket completed the look of "travel-light, move fast".
Looking at them now they are so reminiscent of 'the phantom's' personal guard from 'the league of extaordinary gentlemen'.
thats another plus too. the quazi-steam-punk setting of that movie is +/- exactly what I'm gong for anyway so thats a bonus!
I figured a squad like that would need a hard-ass leader. step up the veteran-sergeant:
Using the gsc axe from the bikers was a great way of showing a powerweapon thats a little more archaic looking and a less 'showy'.
The bare head is from the FW cadian upgrade sprue (had that for an age, first chance Ive had to use it as its rather small tbh), as I'd used this I simply stowed his lid across his back.
The hotshot laspistol is an old reclaimed laspistol (already painted) with a bit of rod added to add the hell-gun look I wanted.
flash-bang nades are from the palanites set.
god I'm at it again, aren't I ? just look at how much he is posing up a storm! (pun intended) bad habits picked up from the space-sharks methinks!
But its not it yet, I was looking at the atalan jackals sprue again and relised I potentially had the perfect use for the wolfquad!
an ammo-runner's atv!
Ive used all manner of imperial guard nades and pockets etc to kit it out as supply runner's quad.
the idea being that this baby, runs back and forth along the trench edges (friendly side, of course!), dropping off ammo and supplies to the riflemen on the line where needed and going back to pick up more from the armoury-store.
note the added mud and filth that will, of course, be added to at the paint stage.
there will not be a rider. This is intended as an objective marker really but will most likely be just as fun to paint as it was to build!
and yes, I'm aware of the irony of having a grenade-belt across the engine-block and a fire-extinguiser not six inches away on the front mud-guard. lol
So thats all at the minute as I'm waiting on more stuff from anvil to get more done... yes, incuding some rifles.
will probably be building more before the painting actually starts but I figured I should share something now anyway, just so you know this project didn't suffer the same fate as my fallen angels...
yes, for a change I decided to do some armour.
I had always planned to have some artillery pieces in the 39th, then remembered that I'd still not done that bomard conversion that I've had sat in a box, unloved, for over 12 years now!
made out of the left-over bits from the valkerie (the one that I turned into an F302 in my royston rifles thread), an old leman russ and a bunch of plumbing junk and an extensive bitzbox.
A good excuse to test out the armour/artillery colourscheme for the 39thers...
as you can see I've gone for a skavenblight dinge basecoat and black wash, then I've done the edge-highlight as on my green tanks but this time updating the detail to utilize the techniques I developed doing the carcharodons, the chips and dink additons.
then instead of further highlighting, Ive done a second layer of 'highlights' in metal.
then Ive washed the recesses with watered steellegiondrab as this makes a great dust/rust/grime effect without going too far.
I did this first on my f302 and then again on my scout bikers. So I knew it should work.
drybrushing the bottom and tracks with rhinoxhide finished the filthy trencher look I wanted...
here's a close-up of the 'interior' details behind the doors (twas one of the old russ kits with the seperate wheels etc...
as most of the deck (made from the back ramp of the valk) is taken up with the immense gun*, including the rear access, the engines must be under the gundeck and in the tank's sides, as on a chimera or basilisk. as such I turned the sponsons into exhaust sections and added some appropriately shaped pipes to match those found on a FWDKOK centaur artillery tractor:
Even though I don'y own any of these I felt It looked fitting this way. Good rule is to match as much to existing gw lits as possible after all...
*the gun, is, in turn, made from the flight-stand mount and side doors of the valk, with plumbing fittings, a big penlid and bits of the valk missile pod, supported by ig tank-sprue ram joists all held together with the earthshaker pivots. the two bits on top are from the russ exhausts, therefore referencing not only the official FW bomard model, but also the old epic one. shown here in one of kevan downey's conversions:
which is a HUGE influence on this one. as are all of his conversions on all of mine. he's truly a tread-head legend...
the extended driver's compartment is made from a cut down dewalt driver bit box:
and is unfortunately very wonky. this thing must have warped over time in the box I've had it in for so long...
meh, nonetheless it shows not in these angled shots and I can live with it by saying its the stresses of the gun or that she took a hell of a hit in the past or whatever. its no biggie really.
the rear out-rigger is just tankguards on a dozer ram.
also the shell-loading mech is an old white-metal ork stormboy backpack, mounted on a trackguard with stowage doors from a landspeeder, all mounted on a dozer-ram strut.
the observant among you will notice the camera-sight and winch from the vindicator sprue, the second of these modified a bit of an IG tow cable. this old girl gets stuck in the mud very easily, needing to be tugged out more often than not, another possible reason for the hull warpage? also borrowed from the speeder sprues are the hop-up steps on the rear, alongside the screen from a marine bike as a pickup for the fore-end camera-feed and a console from the valk as a controle-panel.
the little lamp on the front is from a apothacary backpack and the hatch is also astartes. (I just love the detailed look of these hatches).
the 'interior' details inside the tracked section's little doors are bits of the interior of the valk, plus another marine bike screen in there too...
afaik the rest is basic imperial guard vehicle sprue stuff or scratchbuilt from plasticard or cardboard.
this was real fun to build and just as much fun to paint...
will definately use this colourscheme on the artillery pieces in the army...
So, I bit the bullet today and did one of each of what Ive got built so far, one of the shotgun veterans and the grenadier sgt.
as you can see this guy is ready to science the gak out of heretics in the trenches...
with the stormtrooper sgt you can see i opted to change the pose some since last you saw him.
as a nice little reference to rtcw and where eagles dare, I've got him clutching the everso stealthy and secretive bunch of dynamite that oss agents used on covert ops... also with his hellpistol gone I opted to use a kroot pistol with a lasmuzzle grafted on to replicate the look of something more akin to a musket or sawn-off shotgun in looks, yet still a hotshot laspistol as far as wysiwyg.
I love its winchester-reloady/triggerguard bit and its chunky-ass, yet rounded wooden grip. much better and fits in with the whole full-stock look I'm going for with these...
I must apologise for the yellowish tint to these shots but light was poor at the time and I was rather eager to share, LOL I hope you can see from these that these are at present the pinnacle of my painting prowess to date.
Ive utilized all Ive learnt doing both my last guard army and all ive learnt doing the spacesharks and thrown in a few new teqniques for good measure and I really feel this has paid off.
I will not be rushing this project, doing no more than two or three models at a time to prevent the usual sloppyness and rushing that is bound to happen otherwise when batch painting squads-worth of peadot camo!
LOL so slow and steady wins the race on these...
more soon...ish
So, still no more guard painted...
Ive been rather busy of late but I have been scratchbuilding some bits for the artillery side of the force.
Yes, I know what you might be thinking; "eventually you might have some guard on your guard thread, right?"
the answer is yes, as I'm more than half way through painting the first batch of shotgun veterans I started...
however I was doing a rummage through an old box and found some unfinished and odd things I decided to work on as a bit of scatter terrain:
first up some 1:35 scale barrels (what we used to use back in the day for 40K terrain barrels as the old ones had ugly joins on the lids/bottoms/ and these dont...)
https://www.mediafire.com/view/r4n2k8spmbscf2j as you can see, they are a bit of an experiment in weathering effects. the centre one is done purely with paints, the left one also uses crackle and corrosion (gritty) technicals to added effect and the one with the embering timbers has both of these effects to show burnt and just a bit of rust around the bottom... I even used the crackle on the wood (previously a chip fork I believe) to make it look pre-burnt...
next is some tarped ammo crates.
https://www.mediafire.com/view/fkq3q6es3pofpy9 these are made out of the ends of some cheap spirit levels from my old job. I added the brass etch eagle plates and the tarp is the old, watered pva on a coffee-house paper napkin ploy of old...(the coffee-house ones always seem to have a good tarpy texture)
finally I cut down a vindicator shell (I've had this for sometime now) to proxy as an earthshaker shell...
https://www.mediafire.com/view/n3jp7m0jiido3qk this one is a bit of a visual hint for one of the upcoming scratch-builds... I'll leave that to your imagination for now...
*Ive added some direct links below the images themselve because for some reason they re not showing for me on here...
** just uploaded them to google images for now... damn this with mediafire. why the hell have they disabled direct linking to images? madness...
***ah feth! just found out that they are only visisble if you're a user logged into google... forget it... use the links
https://www.mediafire.com/view/auf8w910w87mg3e/york_vet_03_ssg_l.jpg/file again, with a gsc double-barrelled shotgun, this one has the full-sized gun, which matches the cut-down version featured on the previous guy. his kit is an astartes grenade on a palanite enforcer pocket, an imperial shovel (mated to a mk3 marine chainsword handle, to represent an extendable grip) and a pocket from the eliminator sprue.
as well as this you will see a unique piece of kit, specific to the Eoforwich Pioneer corps, the Frag-charge:
Little more than large grenades, Frag-charges are similar in size and operation to meltabombs yet serve a very different role. used exclusively as anti-personel charges, these can be set as traps or simply thrown into an enemy bunker to "pacify" the room prior to entrance. cumbersome, heavy and very crude but certainly effective...
to make this Frag-charge was simple. its just a necromunda goliath nade with the stick removed. to make it really obvious that it is different to a regular frag-grenade, I diceded to paint it a simple black, place it on its side (as opposed to on end as nades are usually placed) and also add the astartes grenade (which is a pretty big grenade itself, compared to a cadian one, anyway) as a sence of scale.
this model's pose is also an attempt to create the sense of "going over-the-top", charging across no-mans-land toward the enemy. Sprinting like a madman, got to move fast to get close enough to use that shotty to best effect, eh?
https://www.mediafire.com/view/a9d1jx4arx5z3at/york_vet_04_pas.jpg/file pump shotgun dude. this guy you may remember in its unpainted wip state.
as you can see this is where the goliath grenade's stick went, onto the imperial guard pickaxe handle.
the big pocket is ogryn, the nade tempestus-scion the small pocket dw and again with the fire warrior shot-shells. the shotgun is, of course, from the long suffering GSC atalan jackals set.
https://www.mediafire.com/view/x5ub51bvzxlr21j/york_veterans.jpg/file here's a squad shot featuring an appropriately trenchy backdrop...
really loving how these came out. really got that dkok/trench warfare feel but with their own sense of identity thats really starting to flesh itself out as I go along...
most likely the stormtroopers next and theres also some riflemen on the brew too, still got a spaceshark to finish as well but thats another story...
oh, and no, Ive not yet resloved the mediafire issue. its pending an answer from them before I make any hosting changes so for now, just click the links to view this stuff...
*edit*
I've just joined imgBB to host these images, however I've left the mediafire links for now in case that goes wrong too :roll:
'nother day, 'nother model, today I've done one of my aforementioned artillery sratchbuilds:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/w866q7gp13vdknn/york_nebelwerfer.jpg/file visually inspired by a german nebelwerfer, this is clearly based off of a chaos vehicle sprue's havoc multi-launcher.
this has been mounted onto one of the seats of the valkyrie thats sitting on its front.
the grip handles are a tow-cable thats been sliced in half and the tow hook is off the marine vehicle sprue.
the axles are simple plastic rod and the wheels are made out of the drainage slots from plastic hanging-baskets. (the holes were already in there, that and the fact that the thing looks like a dkok artillery wheel, and I had them already anyway, is why I used this to make the wheels, rather than card/washers or whatever you fancy)
the front shield is an old leman russ side-door-hatch.
paintjob is the same as on the bombard.
what is it then?
I dunno, missilelauncher proxy? or just perhaps some rather nice terrain? either way, its obvious visual reference to a trench-warfare smoke-launching-missile-platform cannot be denied.
I can just imagine this sitting at the trench edge, firing off smoke-missiles preceeding an 'over-the-top' charge across no-mans-land...
btw the chaos multi-launcher is one badly cast bit of a model... not very nice detail at all, thanks be it was mostly covered in trench-grime and paint-chips!
the next artillery piece you'll likely be seeing from me will be somewhat more impressive in scale than this...
Thanks gwyn! I'm glad you think so.
as for size? she's pretty small, each of those tubes holds but a basic missile, making them +/- the same size as a spacemarine or imperial guard missile launcher, so far too diddy for a quad launcher thudd gun...
all in, its about the size of a basic imperial guard heavy weapon. see here:
trooper freeman was getting bored waiting for the tech-adept to come and give the faulty launcher the omnissiah's blessing and prepares to make his own "adjustments"
also, got some more barrels done.
I think I nailed that purpley-reddy-patina rust tone these things always have. a base of gal vorbak red followed by the same mixed with some mornfang brown sponged over. then sponge over some rhinox hide and some wash with virmin fur (scrag brown in todays money?) wash and then a bit of a scuff with some dark metal. simple...
sure hope trooper freeman keeps that crowbar away from the second one on the left there...
oh, no, I've other plans for the regular mortar crew... heres some better pics of the shotgun-veteran squad again, this time on my trademark starry background (and with better lighting!)
Crowbar! Half-Life 3 confirmed?! Anyway, these turned out great once again. Really like how the greenstuffed bases add more depth & dynamic posing without the usual 'tactical rocks' ^^
MobileSuitRandom wrote: Crowbar! Half-Life 3 confirmed?! Anyway, these turned out great once again. Really like how the greenstuffed bases add more depth & dynamic posing without the usual 'tactical rocks' ^^
thanks!
yeah, not a fan of the tacticool rocks myself. Always looks a bit 'man-at-C&A' If you know what I mean. and yeah I know my sharks are very much pose-up-a-storm but they too tuse this approach...
this creates the same effect as the rock-stars yet retains the filthy trench-mud look I'm hoping to achive, thus making more thematic sense...
Guardling wrote: Love the flecktarn like camo, how long does that take you to paint?
the pea-dot alone? around 50 minutes on four minis. but that does not include the highlighting or all the other stages.
all in the four took around six hours.
four doing everything prior to the wash stage then a couple of hours the next day to finish extra highlights, gloss and the bases and assembly.
not a big deal to be honest as I've done so much similar work on the royston-rifles that its second nature on the camo now.
I must also add that thats taking my time. stopping evry now and then to drink some re-caffe and flick through a mag, mow the grass, wash up or whatever just so I'm not perpetually hunched over the table staring at minis and brushes...
one day perhaps I'll do a hit-it-hard method and see how long it really takes... or not... supposed to be a casual enjoyable hobby not a grind afterall.
I think the quality would drop enormously if I "busted them out" as I'd get fed up quickly...
Automatically Appended Next Post: been at the scatter terrain again:
this time a nice pallet to go with the barrels.
I figure its +/- the right scale for the barrels? making it 1:35 scale? I dunno. its 2 inches square, which still looks pretty big for 1:35 and tbh its bleedin' huge against the guardsmen but whattayagonna do? the original 'battlefield accessories' set had the same 1:35 scale barrels two types of boxes and some tank traps AND some 2inch square pallet thingys. ok they were chequer-board metal jobbies but still. 2" square pallets so this is my basis for this monstrosity!
its made from 13 2" peices of coffee stirrers superglued onto 9 5mm cubes of balsa. in the exact manner a real pallet would be. go look at one. its the same (unless its a euro pallet of course. they are not square and turf pallets are different too, no blocks just strips, but thats a different story alltogether.)
rather than paint the model as usual, I opted to simply stain it with watered agrax and some spot staining of watered brown and chestnut ink.
a bit of grey and green washed and drybushed after it was dry and then finally the nails drawn on as simple little slitty dots with a fineline marker.
looks ok I think. well, fine for something that cost me nothing but time, inks and a bit of balsa!
This one's pose shows off the fg42 inspired hotshot-nihilis lasgun a treat.
you can see how I simply mounted a lasgun mag assembly onto one of the anvil riflestock parts, then just grafted the van-saar lasser onto that.
painting it as wood stock gives it that high-tech yet oldskool look I realy wanted to convey.
Its chunky enough to be a hellgun against the regular rifles (yet to be revealed, and yes, I must paint some regular riflemen soon, I know...) yet its still sleek enough to not look as rediculous as the hyper-chunky hellguns I made from the reiver grapnels on the royston rifles' darkeyes...
the tankbomb is off the atalan jackals sprue and the nades are a cadian frag and a pocket/gasnade(?) combo from the riever sprue to give that 'elite' feel...
This one uses another atalan jackals component, this time the bag of dynamites to again convey some of that sabotage/demolition thing I was going for and you'll also see he has his GW citadel minitures box on his back too! lols, no I know it looks like one of those but imagine this is a box of tools or further explosives etc...
to pad him out some he has the space marine pocket triplet and another cadian nade.
although the colourscheme is more germanic than british it helps cement the ww1/ww2 feel that is the desired effect here, but the use of more modern equipment such as molle vests and the like is added to make it more 40k and also to reflect that captain america war-time suit that he wore. no way such tech was available then but it looks retro enough to feel right.
anyhow.
Three or so Alan Parsons records and a few cups of recaff gets a couple of riflemen done today:
you can see how the rifles came out now. rather happy with the result. I like them a lot more than the fwdkok lasguns tbh, retro and realistic yet clearly of imperial design. they remind me of the lasguns on the blackstone fortress chaos traitor guardsmen. but a bit more sensibly proportioned for these models.
the backpacks are the leg pockets off of primaris infiltrators/incursors.
really nice for adding that dkok backpack look. the new pockets have nicer detail but standard tactical marine (or mk4 kit pockets would be much better, in truth, they have crisper detail) would do fine, I'm sure. I may yet use these on some of my forthcoming models for a bit of variation in the troops.
the sgt/watchmaster has the ridged lid to denote his rank and the suitably nasty punch-dagger/brass-knuckes comes from a bloodbowl dude. I felt that a set of brass-knuckes are suitably trenchy themed but the hugeness of this specific one absolutely on-par with 40k's weapon stylings
I've been musing on the squads a bit and realise that I've subconciously been building this with second edition rules in mind.
a quick look of the recent codex shows me that infantry sergeants can no longer use lasguns. grumble, grumble.
however dkok infantry can use them. they are called watchmasters not sergeants I believe...
so perhaps I'll use the dkok as a proxy for the army. they are close is asthetics, after all...
that also makes more sense for the shotgun veterans I've done which, as a squad of five are currently illegal.
so use them as engineers? well fine, yeah but the grenade launcher has to go.
so that will go into an infantry squad and I'll make a new shotgunner model to make the five-man engineer team I need.
been toying with the idea of designing a lascarbine for some of the veterans in the force.
I decided to go with something akin to the elysian accatran, bullpup lasgun.
however unlike my previous attempts for the royston rifles, based on the tau rifle mixed with the lasgun, this one is based on the spacemarine mk4 flamer ad as such is much shorter and ideal to represent a short pattern las-carbine:
although only at the mock-up stage at present, I'll be sure to post some shots when I've done a guy with one.
I feel it looks a lot more integral and comprehensive than the other design I did. espescially the carry handle/sight.
the round circley bit is aslso a lovely visual tie-in to the grip/stock on the dkok lasgun design too which is a nice bonus...
This one's pose shows off the fg42 inspired hotshot-nihilis lasgun a treat.
you can see how I simply mounted a lasgun mag assembly onto one of the anvil riflestock parts, then just grafted the van-saar lasser onto that.
painting it as wood stock gives it that high-tech yet oldskool look I realy wanted to convey.
Its chunky enough to be a hellgun against the regular rifles (yet to be revealed, and yes, I must paint some regular riflemen soon, I know...) yet its still sleek enough to not look as rediculous as the hyper-chunky hellguns I made from the reiver grapnels on the royston rifles' darkeyes...
the tankbomb is off the atalan jackals sprue and the nades are a cadian frag and a pocket/gasnade(?) combo from the riever sprue to give that 'elite' feel...
This one uses another atalan jackals component, this time the bag of dynamites to again convey some of that sabotage/demolition thing I was going for and you'll also see he has his GW citadel minitures box on his back too! lols, no I know it looks like one of those but imagine this is a box of tools or further explosives etc...
to pad him out some he has the space marine pocket triplet and another cadian nade.
more soon...
I love these two! Phenomenal work. These have the right mix of hightech and WW2 for my sensibilities. Also, they'd fit right in 2000AD, which has become somewhat of an obsession for me lately (Mainly the ABC Warriors, Nemesis, Strontium Dogs & Rogue Trooper, that is)
osjclatchford wrote:Thanks folks!
been toying with the idea of designing a lascarbine for some of the veterans in the force.
I decided to go with something akin to the elysian accatran, bullpup lasgun.
however unlike my previous attempts for the royston rifles, based on the tau rifle mixed with the lasgun, this one is based on the spacemarine mk4 flamer ad as such is much shorter and ideal to represent a short pattern las-carbine:
although only at the mock-up stage at present, I'll be sure to post some shots when I've done a guy with one.
I feel it looks a lot more integral and comprehensive than the other design I did. espescially the carry handle/sight.
the round circley bit is aslso a lovely visual tie-in to the grip/stock on the dkok lasgun design too which is a nice bonus...
Looking good to me! I think it looks even better than the Van Saar bullpup <3
thanks a lot tauist!
those stormtroopers were just an excuse to use up old legs and torsos but have become a solid part of the force now! they are helping to cement the look of the more elite side of things. still ww1/ww2 in general style but with molle vests, high tech gear and all that jazz to emphasize the far-future-war of it all... glad thats coming across!
as for 200ad? I've fond memories of the 70's/80's collection of mine of old... I too loved all you've named and not forgetting dear old ace garp... great stuff... you got me thinking now, hmm... wartime looking abc warriors thats an idea...
also Its never really occured to me that the regular van saar lasguns are bullpup. but I suppose they are arn't they. its not for size advantage though, is it? as they are almost the same size as the kanrael (cadian) ones. still I had been wondering just where the magazine is supposed to be on those. thats why I added the mag assembly and rifle stock on my stormtrooper's nihilis lasguns. I felt it added a bit of practicality to them and also helped that it looked rather fg42-esque with this detail added...
anyway, one of the aforementioned vetrans
still wip but enough done to show off the new carbine design somewhat.
(he will most likely end up in a command squad with a few similarly armed friends and a company commander at some point)
this guy features the anvil 'plate carrier torso' that (although unlear in this image) features some extensive molle details, making it a great link to the heavy armour torso's I've used on the stormtroopers, yet its lightweight enough so as not to confuse with the stormtroopers on sight.
its the collar/neck that does it on those. as soon as you see that where the helmet and collar almost touch, creating an almost knightly vision-slit effect you know they are different to the rank and file.
anyway, I was looking over the veterans/engineers with shotguns I did before and realised that if I am fielding them as engineers they lack a very important detail; carapace armour!
so 'what to do?' says I.
I figured that the eoforwich pioneers are not the dkok, sure so why not have a few differences hither and yon. got to have their own flavour in there too eh?
so if the stormtroopers are grenadier versions of the rank and file infantry, simply more armour and higher powered rifles, then I can do something similar for the engineer side of the corps too!
so an idea was born:
the 39th elite engineers aka the 'hammer hogs'
these guys will be essentially, to the current engineers, what the grenadiers are to the infantry.
They are little more than heavily armoured walking shotguns, scouting ahead and providing cover for the unarmoured engineer specialists as they go about their work, guarding the labrynthian subterrainian tunnels to prevent counter-attack...
rulses wise they'd just be another five engineers with shotguns to flesh the engineer squad out to ten.
or just an alternate looking other five man engineer squad. whatever really, just fun to create something thats unique to the EPC and not just another dkok/cadian/eleysian clone army, like what my royston rifles became a bit int he end.
oh they've got character, don't get me wrong. just a little too much if you know what I mean. left them looking really disperate. something I'm hoping to avoid in this army. I hoping that even with different armed models, keeping them rather uniform per squad/fireteam it will not 'break-the-bank' of the unified look of the force... just let me know if you think I'm going to far at any point...
really this is just another excuse to model some more no-nonsense guys like the stormtroopers but with shotguns because, shotguns!
visually a fair mix of the engineers and the grenadiers, these guys will use the same 'plate carrier torso' as the above pictured trooper and feature the similar shorter tunics as worn by the grenadiers (this time using anvil's putee legs in place of the vikky lamb ones) too, keeping the "travel light, move fast" asthetic already employed by the grenadiers.
the weapons will actually be anvil's KSG shotguns.
yes, a rather contraversial choice, as they are a very modern, bullpup design. I feel they will create an elite and high tech feel yet (with wooden stock effect in the paint job) still feel akin to the shotguns used by the engineers I've previously modelled.
of course it helps they look like the stargate atlantis triple barreled shotguns too
FYI, I'm still waiting on anvil to restock these KSG shotties so I'm afraid you'll have to wait for pics of these till then.
I am having a ball following your work! High quality painting and extremely imaginative use of bits to make new products- what a treat!
The pioneers and shotgun vets are terrific, realistic in their mass grouping but individually pleasing as well. The bombard though- a real gem. I like how you reasoned out what the 'internal integuements' must look like based on a form follows function model. In a very small way I tried to do something like that when I built a C2V half track. Your model is quite superb with a fusion again of quality paintwork and imaginative application of unusual bits (a Dewalt Bit Box, indeed!).
You sir are a gent! thanks for the kind encouragement and the appreciation! be assured 'tis recipricated!
anyway, as if you don't already know:
Latchford rubs hands in gleeful anticipation of some plastic kreig to convert into more yorkies!
the real hope is that, like the heavy intercessor and necrons, they will get seperate kits later and also (yet highly unlikely) that they come with options for valhallan or steellegion helmets/heads. thats something I've long said gw should do; a generic trencher's kit. very, very unlikely though.
I'dve thought that plastic steel legon made more sense against orks... I mean I know dkok is expensive but at least its technically available in good detail already. sl is not...
but nonetheless, plastic dkok! hells man! thants got to be good however it comes.
...and with anvil industries/victoria lamb heads and bits = happy OSJC!
please don't let it be another limited flash in the pan tease... yes it makes a quick buck, but it only serves to upset more than it pleases in the long run...
well what a weekend for guard colectors eh? and orks for that matter (but thats a topic for another thread methinks...)
looks to me that the future of this regiment may well end up being based on plastic dkok troopers.
A good look at the sprues shows that the heads/hoses will indeed be seperate after-all, making the potential for conversion in this area a doddle... great news indeed.
might even be worth buying from scalpers if its a fair enough price... otherwise expect to wait over six months or whatever. still.
very exciting times.
so what of the old 39'thers at the min?
well, I fear I may have gone too far with the whole extra extra engineers.
but that may have something to do with the fact that ksg shotguns i'm waiting on, on anvil's website have been on "available in 4-8 weeks" for over two months now... sigh, damn covid and brexit shyte...
I'm not giving up on those by any means but I have no illusions I may well have to wait a LOT longer than expected to get my hands on those sexie shotguns afterall... perhaps I might even have some dkok to put them on by then! LOL
so not wanting to sit on a bunch of plate carrier torsos and puttee legs indefinately, when i've not money to waste on such things, I've decided instead to utilize them with those nice new carbine I designed:
inspired by the british wartime commandos, these guys are this army's interpritation of the elysian droptroops, albeit viewed through a dieselpunk lens. incorporating the molle vest designs of the heavily armoured grenadiers and the lighter tunics to suggest similarity with the elite stormtroopers, whilst still being basic guardsmen. these guys feature the nice puttee legs and brodie lids to keep the ww1/ww2 trenchy feel intact and also feature the elysian style lasguns and shoulderpads for the modern tactical aspect. the standout feature most of you will have noticed is the beret on the centre guy of the group.
this was a simple greenstuff sculpt as, one, I wanted him to be wearing the gasmask like the others and, two, I could not find any suitable beret heads for love nor money.
the simple additon of a scout rifle silencer on one trooper and some of 40k's more exotic imperial grenades helped to cement the whole elite/special ops look I wanted.
the bacground behind these is that they are veteran guardsmen that specialise in the more covert and stealthier side of things as far as special ops are concerned.
The grenadiers, hitherto referred to as the Bebbanburg Hammer-Hogs.
(got to use the name somewhere in the force and I figure that name is ideal to represent the brutality and blunt nature of the grenadiers fighting style of blow up everything and shoot everyone in the face)
are the hammer, these guys are the scalpel.
essentially they'll either end up as a hardened vet squad or simply end up as the company commander's personal bodyguard of handpicked bad-asses...
I still like the idea that the commander would pick the best operatives from the elites available to him and use them as his own personal guard. hence the fact that the armour is similar to the Bebbanburg grenadiers but clearly not as obvious. carrying the theme across but not the function on the models. making them fine as basic guard.
Did you ever had a look at Blightwheels Britanic Hell'ington line? They have a very similar british vibe and might be interesting for conversion work
https://www.blightwheelminiatures.com/britanic-hellington I recently got their terrorbirds which look pretty awesome
Love these guys, the commitment to the conversions and the paint schemes really comes through on the finished models which do truly look like labour's of love!
well, I got those last two stormtroopers done today:
note the other tank-mine from the atalan jackals set and another of those frag-charges.
I've added in some cadian nades and the cadian bayonet and empty scabbard.
note that the bayonet charging guy's lasgun is empty, no charge-mag in the chamber.
the pocket is from the intercessor sprue.
and here is the obligitory squad shot:
the bebbanburg grenadiers in all their blunt and offencive glory!
also got another shotgunner done for the engineer/sapper veterans squad.
note the wrench from the atalan jackals sprue (god I've pillaged that kit haven't I?), pockets from the mk4 marine sprue and intercessor sprue (large and small respectively) and the shells/krak grenade from the sternguard kit.
the shotgun with the muzzlebrake is from the neyophyte sprue but had the annoying niddy looking alien claw hand on it. I shaved it all away, cleaned down the pump to nothing, then replaced it with a bit of aluminium tube with a slot cut out of it to fit over the original, mutilated pump.
this gave me the option of modelling it back, mid-pump.
shant bother with yet another squad shot of those... you've seen more than enough of those guys by now...
I decided to add some gore and an overall good splattering to the bayonet armed bebbanburg grenadier so as to better suggest at the brutality of the squad.
He's been getting properly stuck into the heretics in the trenches, I think it came out pretty good all told.
oh and here's a WIP of that bannerguy that goes with the other commandos in the company command squad:
I'm sure the DKoK will be available, both from ebay and later as a separate kit. Pricewise I don't think it'll matter much which way to go, since the KT2 box price is probably discounted enough so that even if you only buy the DKoK from one box, you'll end up paying about the same as what the separate GW kit will end up costing.
Lets hope the scales of the plastic DKoK's will match your future kitbashing plans.
to be honest, from what ive ascertained from all the skuttlebutt and image analysis, they'll be fine scale-wise.
the good thing about anvil is that it perfectly draws the line between the guard resins and plastics available from both gw and fw.
all the detail and finesse of the resins with the uniformity and clarity of the plastics, making components from either source matching with anvil's gear with no problem.
same goes for the victoria minis too (who's legs I use on these stormtroopers)
Ive seen anvil arms on both cadians and on the resin dkok and they both look spot on.
likewise the elysian parts were a good match for anvils torsos etc and that shows just how good a design team they are. getting that middle ground, scale and detail-wise must have been a tricky task but they've nailed it! hell, gw should ditch fw and hire anvil LOL
looking at the dkok plastics they look to be +/- the same size, in height as a resin dkok yet with some chunkier details hither and yon (feet, ankles, hands, weapons) that are more to scale with the current gw human plastics. well, the ones that share a scale with the cadians and catachans anyway: thats gsc, cawdors and orlocks, don't get me started on the other necromunda scale issues...
So, I fancied a nice little experiment today. as an excuse not to start on the rank and file infantrymen (tis rather hot though so i feel I can be forgiven)
I was collecting up some old models to sell-on and found this headless wonder in the mix:
clearly far too mutilated to be usefull to anyone as a steel legionnaire anymore, I thought I'd test my skills and see If I could turn him into an artilleryman one-off for my 39ers!
A little nostalgic forray into white metal to see if my love affair with the stuff is still strong or if all of gw and anvil's lovely plastic and resins have turned my head forever...
the head, collar and gun had all been chewed to funt with a hobbysaw and clippers from the look of it, so, I first set about replacing the lasgun barrel/muzzle with a resin one I had (I've run out of plastic lasguns now) and, although a little short, I think it's fine to represent a stubby cut-down carbine, that is little more than a glorified laspistol with a folding stock. Almost as if the lasguns are an afterthought for the gunners, the sort of thing ideal to represent what a back-field artillery unit would be armed with. this was also a bit damaged so was re-rendered with some gs (damn pis-poor fw casting, grr).
I completely resculped the collar while I was at it.
the front hose was clipped away and the 'vents' on the rebreather canister shaved off and a pocket fold sculpted in its place.
whilst the newly reformed collar was still soft I pushed an anvil brodie head (with a cut down neck) into the middle then reformed the whole lot with my silicon sculpting brush. simple!
I then did the base with the gs left over. then to cover the hole on the back where the rocket backpack used to be, I simply glued on a scout grenade/pocket combo on there, yeah I could just have easily re sculpted back to be a strap etc, but, this is a nicer finish imho...
well to answer the above original question, its not something I'd do again in a hurry.
whist doing the trimming and carving to reform the front collar and right-hand pocket I remembered what a bitch it is working with white metal to do such things. it broke 5(!?) stanleyblade tips doing it!
the stuff is a pigger in retrospect and, yes its true to say I am a total convert to plastic and resin these days... well anvil's resin anyway...
I should get him based and painted within a few days and then we'll see how/if he fits in with the other Eoforwich boys in terms of quality. will the paint job be enough to make the grade or will he forever slip into darkness with the rest of his steel legion kin Ive consigned to oblivion in the pages of history...
my reasoning was that the steel legionarre wit the plasmagun I did to test the colourscheme is ok, so..?
So, got that artilleryman done:
actually came out pretty good all told.
the thing about the lower-res nature of old metal castings is that you have to add a lot of fine detail that simply isn't there on the sculpt, with paint; the defined 'sections' of the shell, a lot of the folds on the cloth etc...
also there are a lot of connecting blank sections that are the innevitable result of single part metal castings, you've a choice of either painting these as the part they originate from as if it is stretched and skewed (like lo-res graphics on low poly 90's game models) or you can paint the edges properly difined and plant the 'blank' section in black. I chose to do the latter so that the mini would look better not only against the resins already in the force, but its also a better look in general.
so is it a fair match now its done? well, what say you?
I think, although it has the same short greatcoat and, of course the same head and colourscheme of the others it does have obviously differing details that are down to the sculpt being from a different faction and designer.
however, these things; like the big gauntlet-type gloves, the lack of armoured shins or putees and the differing lasgun design can all be explained away by the fact that he's an artillerman, not a line-trooper.
the rest is kinda close enough to not look too bad alongside the others. the lesser definition on detail not all that obvious in the end...
the real question, is it worth it?
I'd say it depends on the model you are converting. this one? I'd say, yes, totally.
I had the model knocking around anyway, pre hacked and the crouching/shell-loading pose is a very specific one that I rather liked and would be a cowson to try and replicate in resin parts from anvil quite as accurately as this.
it would be worth it for characters and specific poses, sure, but to go out of your way to get a load of metal rank-and-file guardsmen and hack them apart just to match your resins? no chance.
you'd be throwing your money away...
this does potentially open up some future ideas of using other 3rd party metal character minis as future conversion fodder though... as I say, the pose would really have to be worth it to warrent such action...
You have done a fantastic job of rescuing this model, which I must say ends up one of my favourite elements of going through the stash. Perverse, as it means I end up skipping over those 'perfectly formed' models, but the muse demands it!
Great explanation of the process/outcome, and really great to see the thought process at work. Thanks for sharing
So I decided to make up some shells to go alongside the artilleryman:
trooper Essex muses on which shells to use, high-ex or gas? If only he had a heavy mortar to load them into...
as you can see I've, again, used the Steel Legion rocket-shells and based them onto some of the nifty bits of sprue that Anvil supply their 'trencher' range on.
for those not in the know, so as not to waste space, anvil model their sprues as interesting rubble etc so as they can be used on bases or diorama pieces. something they've done since back in their 'afterlife' days... clever and resoursefull, eh?
this sprue is handily designed to feature trench duck-boarding planks and Ive used a few in some greenstuff so as the shells aren't just sitting in the mud...
these alternative shells are made from cadian flamertanks with the fin section clipped from spkes off of a chaos spikey sprue ram, the only thing I had enough of to warrent using but other things would do I'm sure. (plasticard 'x' sections would be ideal...)
the planks on this base are actually made by pressing the sprue into the greenstuff to steal the texture. I made sure that I mixed the paint on the base whilst wet to better blend the mud and board edges to make it look slick with filth and almost impossible to see where the boards end and the mud begins...
and no, I have no idea why I had three spare steel legion rocket launchers in the bitzbox either...
Those shell bashes are great. I swear I have no imagination at all - that is a brilliant use of flamer tanks! Never thought of that, keep thinking they might be useful for skip bashes instead.
Now I know what future artillery pieces will be carrying for ammo...
The repair job on that artillery man came out great too. I have no skill with greenstuff so seeing your results is very gratifying.
@ragsta, yeah the shells are so easy. But look ok when done. As for sculpting:
Use silicon brush sculpting tools and a Stanley knife. Lick tools regularly between touching the greenstuff. I'd be hopeless without the silicon brushes;
Gs don't stick to them. I use the square chisel headed one the most...
Also dentist tools can be good for fine work. But will too need to be licked between uses.
spit is great for preventing GS sticking. Don't gob all over it by any means but a bit of spit goes a long way. Some use vaseline. This is bad imho as it then needs removing prior to painting. And plain water is not really effective at all... Just my two pennith...
Very soon!
artillery support for the eforwich 39ers has always been the intention with this collection, however I had no intention of being scalped by FW's obscene prices.
so scratchbuild 'tis then:
Years ago, when I first planned the bombard conversion, I had purchased a earthshaker cannon sprue on ebay for a very low price (snapped it up!) purely to get my mits on the cannon support struts.
I figured I'd get round to making a carriage for the leftover cannon eventually and somehow, so 12 or so years later and 'eretiz!
the wheels are the make or break of this conversion, they come from lego technics range and I've had them since I first bought the lego kit they came off of when I was a mere whelp of a boy! (single figures!)
once I discovered 40k (I had also been doing wartime vehicles and dioramas in my pre-teen days) I realised the wheels were suitably 40k looking and would be ideal for one of those 6 wheeled chimera jobbies that was often in the wd's of the time.
however, I never got my hands on a second set of wheels so this conversion never happened.
years pass, and in the box they reamain. the tyres long since lost to the mists of time.
however, the design is perfect for representing artillery-wheels to mimic the dkok early 20th century industrial warfare asthetic.
all I had to do was add some 'trench-tyres' which, during the wars, were little more than thin plates of dense vulkanised rubber that soften the footprint of the wheels somewhat, preventing damage to the actual wheel itself, keeping the gun standing true. just like the ork artillery wheels show them and I've also seen them first hand on similar weapons in the imperial war museum etc...
I simply used cereal box card superglued on for this but a better/more patient modeller would have sourced some abs pipe the right size and cut it into even segments and glued that on.
I figured, as It was going to be filthy and old looking, this would not be worth spending money on. spacemarine bike (or ork) wheelhub finished the wheels off just fine.
yes, I know the fw carriage has four thin wheels a side but these are twice the thickness so, funt it, it'll do...
the gun was altered by adding the muzzlebrake from the leman russ canon, the rest of the russ battle-cannon used either side of the earthshaker-gun as a mount. to this I added to trimmed down bits of imperial dozer-blade as a stubby, almost vestigial, blast shield.
as I'd used the original breach-plate on the bombard, I simply used a valkerie rocket-pod end with a little styrene railroad valve-crank I bought a bunch of at the engineering exhibition a few years back (one is on my autocannon conversion in the royston rifles thread, if you're that interested).
couple of pistons from the imperialguard dozer chassis, and a crank made from the searchlight mount on one side and a heavybolter mount bit from the valkerie sprue on the other side and the gun was done.
this was then mounted on a frame made of two predator/whirlwind plates (top/bottom) and some more of that long-suffering valkerie kit for the sides, a couple of track-guard bits at the back end and two rhino doors.
one as the back beneath the breach area and one trimmed down and put on the left side as a stand-point.
this last bit also has a handle off of something I cant remember and theres a grabrail made from a
tow hook (like I did on the nebelwerfer). also on the left side is a control panel made from a cut down auspex with a gungrip from a gsc heavy weapon positioned like a joystick.
on the right side there is the stowage section from the russ (fixed up with trackguard leftovers) and a towcable from the imperial guard tank-sprue.
the rear outrigger/platform is made from the dozer chassis with step-platess from the landspeeder-storm added. also on here is a towhook and a nifty little loading-crane, made from the servo arm from the long-suffering atalan jackals sprue with a reiver grapnel claw mounted on it (looks more like those annoying fairground claw-games than a shell-loader, true. But tis a nice detail nonetheless.)
this is then finished off with a swizzels plastic lollystick axle (no longer available these days, they are all compressed paper now, so use styrene or brass/ali rod/tube) with a pair of wheels made from the plastic basket drain holes like I did on the nebelwerfer. however, instead of leaving them plain metal with weathering, I decided to make trench-tyres for these too as it would match the others nicely and also suggest at the weapon's great weight.
oh, yeah, all of the outrigger is liked to the rhino plate under the breach-area via an upturned space marine bike pedal-section.
the front of the carriage-frame is finished with a pit of artboard (plasticard would be better in truth) with the storage-box from the predator kit and two of the chimera skull plate bits 'hung' under this to represent further amour to prevent grenades et being thown under or whathaveyou.
onto one of these the 'canvas-wrap' from the imperialguard tank-spruewas added, if for nothing but a difference in colour and texture and also to hide the twinned nature of the two chimera plates on there...
oh, and before someone askes for it, here it is with some 'crew'
no, not he right models at all but they will do for now to show the scale off properly...
although this can be considered done I'm not sure I'm 100% done with this yet. I've a hankering for a scenic base and some tools etc added hither and yon... we shall see...
thanks FJ, I was rather happy with it...
anyway, here are the tools and that I mentioned to go with said earthshaker carriage.
SM whirlwind toolbox, gsc pick from the atalan jackals (with added grip), a shovel from the IG tank sprue (with a handle from a goliath grenade) and the lantern from the empire steam tank kit. (this is mounted on a little hook I've added to the carraige, pics later..?)
also got that ATV quadbike I was working on done while I was at it.
although rather modern in its design I've added modern bullpup rifles so I figured this would be suitable! besides, the german Sonderkraftfahrzeug 2 half-trackmotorcycle was a thing so why not this...
(see earlier post for construction details)
doing more with the earthshaker carriage
some camo-net drape made from aluminium car body repair mesh.
I painted it with a base of black spray and then overbrushed (a crude wet-drybrush-esque method) some steel legion drab and then added some zandridust as a highlight.
not only is this a nice contrast to the blue-grey armour, but its a nice tie-in with the greatcoats on the troops...
here are those tools from above, but on the model...
today I got round to something Ive been working on under my hat for a bit now.
A heavy bolter nest.
made from the kromlech bits-of-war HMG carriage (the one I had as a heavy bolter for my 11st RR) with the heavy intercessor heavy-bolter in place of the vickers/maxim it had on it as-standard.
the heavy bolter has been altered to fix any 'missing bits' with gs, the grip is the ass-end off an intercessor's bolt-rifle and the top handle comes from an autocannon ammo mag.
the box-magazine is from the atalan jackal heavy stubber but with a 'flap' from an imperial vehicle sprue ammo box, to match more of these added to the base.
those I modelled to look like two 'fresh'ones, one of these featuring some rounds poking out on a belt (made from a deathwatch pocket) and also one discarded one, thrown over the fence.
the fence posts are just bits of round sprue, filed down with a triangular file to give the wood texture and the barbed wire is scratch-made from 0.4mm wire.
the empty shells are from anvil, several small 'piles' and some induvidual shells stuck on too for a fair looking distribution.
the obligitory spade from the heavy-weapon sprue and the whole thing was good to go!
so why 50mm base not 60? why a base at all if its on its own? the nebelwerfer hasn't one!
well I wanted to do it as a stand-alone mini diorama as I wanted all the fence and ammo details and all that jazz but wanted to make it so it can be used with any squad, any regiment really, if I wanted to. simply putting it with two riflemen on their own bases, I suppose...
use aside, I feel it looks very similar to the dkok one in the end and thats down to the kromleck carriage. anvil do a good one too so thats worth a look if you're interested in other suppliers. the use of the HI bolter makes it it's own thing for sure... very familiar but subtly different
So today I decided to paint up my infantry company's commander:
Major Winters. (sorry, this image gets a bit shrunk to fit the forum here, so do feel free to right click and open in a new tab to see it fullsize)
Unlike those commanders that bought their commission and lead via fear and intimidation, Winters earned his commission via several battlefield promotions.
Don't be fooled, it was not a case of dead-mans-boots, Winters is a natural born leader, who prefers to lead by example. such actions caught the eye of regimental command and with each promotion, Winters rose and rose again to the challenges before him, more than proving his worth time and time again.
There's nothing winters would ask of his men that he would not and has not done himself.
By leading from the front, he has earned their respect and his reputation for legendary heroism their admiration.
Winters has very little respect for pomp and circumstance, preferring to stick to the practicality that standard issue kit provides.
As a young lieutenant, winters was issued a ludicrously ornamented and expensive plasma-pistol by a grateful planetary govenor.
secretly amused at the ornamentation of the pistol winters supressed the smirk he felt rising as he was presented the firearm and accepted the gift for the honour it was.
"ornamentation aside, it was an exceptionally well built pistol, as short-lived as it was.." he later remarked in hindsight
In his zeal to "get-the-job-done" as he puts it, fighting heretics on karak prime, he taxed the power core to the limit through extended use, knowing full well the weapon would likely explode. The pistol's final shots slaying the heretic astartes leader he was dueling, at the cost of his hand up to the elbow as the core blew in a flare of a blinding-white plasmatic explosion, quarterizing the wound as it did so.
In agonising pain, half binded and limited to use of his chainsword for personal protection, Winters first ensured his platoon's squads had secured all their objectives, only then did he allow himself the luxury of passing out at the aid station.
not being something he's overly keen to experiance again, the Major now sports a simple bolt-pistol, claiming "the only thing this will blow up is heretic skulls..."
this model uses the anvil puttee legs and an 'irregular' torso to achive the pilot's jacket look.
I felt the whole, fighter jacket look gave him a sense of induviduality and authority, yet retained a feeling of practicality I wanted to show.
he's in charge, no doubt about it but he's still one-of-the-boys.
the pose also helps to that end.
the arm on the sword comes from a whf pikemen with a bit of gs for a cuff.
the skeletal hand is the one I cut off the reliquiry from the blade-guard ancient I turned into that fallen angel model.
I felt this looked rather like a t800 hand and that also went rather well with the bomber-jacket and helps to add a sense of a history to him.
the sword is from an old metal commissar arm with the hand removed and a grip from a catachan sword put inside the hilt-cradle.
the bolt-pistol and mag are from the HH mkIII marine sprue.
I went for a 32mm base to show his importance as a character and added some more home-made barbed wire as on the heavy bolter base.
while painting, as I did the jacket in the dark brown leather I usually do the gloves in I chose to do the glove in a yellow leather instead. looks appropriately ww1/ww2 I feel. he's kinda dressed like Indiana Jones now I think of it!
his helmet colourscheme shows off his rank nicely too.
something I should have mentioned before, the helmets and crests signify ranks quite clearly in this army, once you know the legend:
The 39th use helmets with ridged crests and skull motives to denote ranks at-a-glace.
these are as follows:
39th Eoforwich Pioneer Corps Infantry Ranking designations.
- Squad level (non-coms, sergeants etc...) - plain crest, green skull
- Platoon level (junior officers, lieutenants etc...) - green crest, bronze skull
- Company level (Captains, Majors etc..) - green crest, silver skull
- Regimental level (Colonel's and above) - green crest, gold skull
so, sgts have a clean stripe but a green skull and all officers have the green stripe, just changing the skull badge for rank.
theres auxilleries too;
- Medical corps (all ranks of medical officers) - White crest and red skull
- Engineer corps - as the infantry scheme, simply exhanging the green with black.
(so, simple black skull for squad-level and a black stripe and 'metal' skulls for the officers)
however, Its worth noting that veterans and covert operatives are often exceptions to the rule, Opting for the simple plain brodie lid design for reasons of stealth, or to avoid becoming obvious targets for enemy sniper-fire...
Cheers FJ, dashing is what i was going for.
kinda like lord flashheart for 40k!
So, although Ive had a spurt of prolific activity here recently, I've become a bit preoccupied with some rather desperate home improvement work the last week or so, as such I've had little to nout to show, painted wise.
so to make up for this void of activity, here are some wip guys Ive on the go at the min...
some riflemen. Mk4 marine and infiltrator leg pockets. cadian knives, cadian and khorne berzerker grenades.
their sergeant. note the enforcer pockets and the sm pocket triplet.
this L.t is the platoon's leader. twas a bit of a cowson to get the pose as I wanted it to be honest, but totally worth it in the end.
the torso is a valkerie crew one for the armoured, yet simple look I fancied.
the arms are made up of the imperial guard tank sprue gunner arms. the hammer arm uses the hand from the pikeman arm (the other half of the parts I used on the major) to give the over the shoulder look. the hammer is yet another component from the atalan jackals sprue. backpack is mk4 marine pockets and the grenades are tactical squad sprue.
his holster comes from the heavy intercessor sprue. but any would have done I suppose. I just like the bullet details on it...
this is the platoon command squad medic. lots of catachan pockets and some gs to make the hands match (small plate on the back of the glove as on the medkit carrying hand)
heres a sniper and grenade launcher guy, also from that command squad.
boltrifle scope, mk4 and intercessor pockets and grenade pouches.
the gl is GSC neophytes sprue with the 'stock' from the enforcers sniper rifle mated to some .5mm styrene rod. the barrel is altered a bit so that it's rather stubby looking.
the shell is one of anvil's empty rounds with a half-round bead added.
here's a bit of a more crazy concept.
this combat engineer is sporting a state of the art "demolition-suit".
combat engineer corps demo-suit.
this crude yet effective servo-exo-skeleton amplifies the users strength and speed, giving them destructive power almost on par to astartes power-armour, though with a large degree less protection and sophistication...
the observant among you will see it's made from an orlock arms master.
the inclusion of a brodie-lid-head and a bit of a resculpt of the chest to remove the chunky-ass neck chain and cover up the exposed pecs and abs, replacing it with a simple uniform undershirt.
the belt buckle and sash have also been altered, shaving away the bottom of the 'skull' and reforming the sash to further distance it from the orlock iconography it started as.
the hammer head was also swapped out, the ludicrous and odd-looking orlock one for the practical and realistic looking one from the gsc aberrants sprue. this helps cement the somewhat industrial look I've been going for across the army.
this dispatch-rider one may or may not get finished. still not 100% on this yet
its only at the blutack stage so no GS sculpting (aside the base) has been done yet.
the panzerfaust is from mad-robot and is a leftover from my royston rifles panzerfaust jousters.
he too uses a valkerie crew torso and uses the bedroll from the tank sprue and some guitar string with 90% of the outer wire removed as an aerial on the wire-less set.
still missing it's replacement right handlebar (the original of which ended up on the ammo-atv) and I'd probably scupt a face-scarf, flapping in the wind, hence the gasmask on his waist.
but as I say, still on the fence on this one...
found some time and got the demo suit done this afternoon!
I decided to go for the plain head rather than the officer one in the end.
I did my best to tie him in with the aesthetic of hte 39th I've done so far using a sympathetic colourscheme.
the clothes, war-kit and armour panels are painted, as on the other troopers, the powered suit itself painted as the tanks and artillery in the force. An attempt to suggest that this is like a tank that you have to put on (think what centurion suits are for astartes)
I kept all the gearwork and piping in basic dark steel and copper, to further suggeat at a more wartime/diesel-punk setting.
I added some of the dirt/grime I usually add to the tanks/artillery upon the power-fists, espescially the right one and around the hammer head, to further suggest he's been smashing gear up somewhat!
after a highly generous donation of bits from pyroalchi,(heads, arms, legs, these mortars, two sandbag bits and some lasguns etc... a little while back, now) I've got the three mortars done today:
like the heavy bolter nest, I decided on using the 'centurion sized' 50mm base as, the crew could be seperate and its a good size to show off some diorama style bits...
The first one is an example of a prepared position. a dugout/trench-wall effect created with miliput (like hell Iwas going to waste that much greenstuff, not made of money!)
Again I used the anvil sprue trench-boards, both as uprights and pushed into the mud as mucky duckboards.
note the use of the perforated metal to reference the old gw studio third-edition trench-system terrain-board and also the front cover of the IG 3rd ed codex...
scratch-built barbed-wire as on te HB nest and another shovel. the bigger, more pronounched 'slate' rock bits in the trench-wall are actually vermiculite...
I used both of the sandbag bits Pyroalchi sent me and all the spare mortar shells on this one alone, leving me to be a bit more creative on the next ones.
the second one is an example of an improvised cover, simply setting up behind some barbed wire baricade, already on the battlefield.
this was created with more of the hand made wire and a dead-body bit from the corpse-cart with a spare brodie lid added.
this poor old boy has been stripped of kit, his boots, gasmask and even his trou have been looted, leaving him to a rather undignified end, lumped into the mire amongst the wire...
as I said, I'd used all the mortar-shells so I decided to use the spare rocket from the scout-sniper sprue, as, with its little leather (how I painted it anyway) wrap it looks like a bundle of three or so, held in something akin to a chisel or file roll...
the firing 'missile' from the marine sprue is the ideal mid-launch mortar. I went for a simple plume of white smoke, rather than flame, to further suggest it as a mortar rather than missile...
the third is simply the mortar, sans cover of any kind. base detail relying on a little tree-stump left of the mortar and the rather obvious ammo-box, based on the dkok thud-gun ammo-box in its design. It's made from a plastic 'size indicator' tag from a coat-hanger with a cardboard/greenstuff lid/innards and half-round-beads with pva 'caps' on for the shell tops...
the handles are some plasticard 'I' section trimmed and glued on.
crew pending...
oh, here's a wip shot to see the stuff in that stage and get a look of one of the converted crew;
wow asjclatchford, those look really amazing! I hope that doesn't sound cruel, but the poor dude on the second base is an incredible detail. Glad these parts found a nice home and can be part of of such greatness instead of catching dust in my bitsbox.
did two of of the company commander's command squad today.
beret guy and the pose-up-guy...
decided to make the beret guy a Lieutenant. hence the bronze skull badge on his beret.
I figured that Winters is a Major, after all, and a Lt is a worthy rank for his xo. in rules terms he's just a guardsmen with a lasgun but he looks the part thats for sure.
you can see that I went for a wood-stock fore-grip and pistol-grip on the carbines. it kinda has that feel of a thompson, yet sporting the modern bullpup design.
the round section in the middle of the gun reminiscent of the similar component on the dkok lasrifles...
the molle plate-carry vests came out well in the end.
Although as far as rules are concerned, just guardsmen, these torsos are an obvious visual link to my 'bebbanburg grenadiers' stormtroopers, yet clearly more slimline and lightweight, ideal for showing these guardsmen as former grenadiers, picked out by the major to be part of his command staff, swapping their hotshot lasguns for the compact and futuristic bullpup lascarbines...
wheras my regular guardsmen are inspired by dkokand steel legion, these are the 39th's answer to the elysian guardsmen, allbeit through a dieselpunk lens as it were...
so my folks got themselves a new microwave.
had some fancy shaped styrofoam on it.
terrain time says I:
Inspired by Guy and Penny's work over at midwinter mini's I decided to make a section of it into a concrete road-block, low-cover barrier-wall.
I see this as either a roadblock or a checkpoint or even just a vehicle/troop stopping barrier wall that would be a few yards out from the trenches itself, something to slow any possible assault, essentially 40k's answer to a concrete jersey barrier.
I added the poster on the 'inside' of the wall to keep the guardsmen on the inside of it motivated!
I cut the polystyrene by heating a knife over a gas-torch and sliding it through the stuff with haste. It cuts real clean and fast, melting as it goes, but gives off some cyanide fumes so do be carefull doing this...
I added the screws into the base as they did too. creates a lovely counter balance that makes it easier to use and work with.
however, unlike G and P, I elected not to use the mould inducing flour and salt mix, MENTAL!
Heavans no, I used some easyfill45 mixed into some cuprinol garden-shades (black but any colour would do) and gave it two neat coats in high sun to dry quickly.
This gave the lovely cement texture but retained the 'sharpness' of the polystyrene's edges, keeping it looking like a cast peice. It also doubled as a good undercoat.
I basecoated it admin-grey and then added zandridust to the mix and sponged it all over. I added ever more lighter tones to this and continued to sponge it on, concentrating more and more on the edges with each successive highlight.
once dry I gently smunged (an OSJC term that is a mix of a stipple and a wash; thin paint applied in a stippling motion so it ends up dappled) on some castellan green hither and yon as mouldy-mossy algeish growth.
next I watered down some of my agrax/nuln mix (the one I always use) so it was very thin and stained the whole thing evenly.
once dry I smunged some rhinox hide around the bottom edge as mud/dampness and used neat nuln oil and agrax for water/filth runs over the surfaces.
the poster on the inside is printed out from an online pic and the ink ran a bit when pva'ing it on, but that just adds to the effect I suppose. Tip with these. let the ink dry a day and varnish it with something like testors dullcoat before applying them to retain the ink quality...
Also, on bigger ones, I like to fold them up and really score the edges and then unfold them again to make them look as if they were folded before applied. A rip here and there hurts none either...
A bit of static grass and some leaves here and there and its done...
I'm dead happy with the finish on this. The sponge highlighting and colours have really captured what I wanted.
everyone always paints concrete grey. its not. Well, all the wartime stuff around here in essex is the yellowy sandy colour I've done here.
I suppose it depends on the mix and the sand/ballast used but all the pillboxes, bunkers and dragons-teeth I've seen are always the sand-coloured stuff...
Looking great! I have to avoid checking Anvil's website more than once a year or so, I end up spending too much money and adding whole squads to a guard army that's already approaching Crusade level. Great conversions and poses.
thanks guys.
bit sad there's no guesses on the preview but thats ancient history now anyway, as this is the latest addition:
The Imperial 'Badger' excavator
An STC design from the first days of the Imperium's colonisation of the galaxy, the 'badger' excavator is a sub-terrainian drilling and tunnelling machine.
Although similar to the adeptus mechanicus' 'termite' drill or the DKOK's 'hades' assault drill, this device outdates them both and is, to all extents and purposes, considered a civillian machine, oft' used by terraformers and colonists to create tunnels for pipework and underground faclilities, mine for materials and even demolition of condemned structures.
Armed with the ferocious and highly destructive high-torque adamantium mining bits there's little it cannot chew through.
however, should a particularly stubborn vein of mineral-ore or crystaline structures slow progress, the tri-multi-melta, nestled amongst the drill-heads is sure to plough through a path...
So, you can see that this is a big-ass drilling machine for my engineers to ride in, creating trench-systems, destroying bunkers and chewing $hit up!
its built from the mantic games 'veer myn' tunneller model and I've nothing but good things to say about it!
the addition of some bits with aquillas (from the valk missile pods) on the sides and an aquilla in the slot on the back made sure that there were no sugestions of divided loyalties.
The basic kit has a great second edition 40k feel to it. a certain 'je ne sais quoi' like the same level of detail as the classic chimera and russ sets of the time, not to mention the classic rhino variants, making it a good match for the feel of this collection so far.
here's a shot from t'other side, featuring an engineer for scale purposes.
As the weapons that came with it are designed for skaven like critters, they are rather absurd looking. as such they were a no go.
you can see I instead added a melta, the one from the new primaris speeder, purely because it has three barrels, making it seem like it blongs on the model.
It just needed inverting and the original topsight clipping off and a new one added on the new top edge. (formerly the bottom)
A few things to mention. the model goes together insanely easy. it practically clips together but I'd advise glue tbh.
however worth mentioning that the drills and the front 'plough' blades are made of pvc not styrene, requiring superglue not plastic cement there.
now, did I leave it at that? hell no.
you know me, sticker for the details. Looking at the kit made me realise that it was a rather easy job to make a detailed interior too... I mean, why not, the FW Ad-Mech termite does...
This was something I began to regret as I attempted to work out where to glue and where not to... got there in the end... bulk of it is imperial dozer blades and valkerie ceiling as both the floor and ceiling.
The front interior plate is the rhino one with the vindicator vents above it. Thats a component I've wanted to use for an age now!
To kinda make sense of the bits where the rear plate fits, I used the centurion backpacks either side and a valkerie rocket pod end as the inside of the access plate on the ass end.
the extra control panel is from the valk and the tubes and cables, hither and yon, are from primaris and stormtrooper kits.
Theres even a bit off of the back of a gsc neophyte's back as a tiny panel too.
The slots/benches cried out for tools in them so I added the las-cutter and ammo from the atalan jackals on one side and a centurion drill dumped on the 'floor' on the other.
the big caged light on the ceiling is from the chaos vehicle sprue.
The rear needed a go-between for the inside and the outside so I used the open iris here and trimmed it to fit between the lugs.
this is adorned with bits from the IG vehicle sprue (top bit), the valkerie kit (tubes and light section) and a flamer-tank from the atalan jackals kit. well half of it anyhow, the other half is on the inside.
there's also a bit from the landspeeder and a SM bike caged light on there too.
the little yellow pikey light is actually off of the 'battle-for-macragge' teleport homer...
this back bit was rather tricky to do and to get it looking natural. not just a bunch of stuff slapped on the back. It still does a bit I suppose but, funt it, its done now...
this model should have been an ease to build and paint but the constant need for sub assemblies to allow the interior to work and be painted properly slowed progress some, for sure.
likewise the front end was a pig to work out what to glue and not to as the pvc drill bits are absurdly heavy.
most would just glue it all and then paint it but I like to get it all painted properly...
still, twas well worth it in the end. A very different and appropriately thematic vehicle that would also be right at home in a GSC or Ad-Mec army too... go get one. thats an order!
thanks guys. I'm pretty stoked with this one. its really a centrepiece for the army... although the bomard was before this so...
and time took? well the initial build was five minutes. (not joking, mantic kits are a doddle, no mold lines and no sprues)
then around nine or ten hours of playing around with the ol' bitsbox to build the interior.
the most annoying time consumer was working out what/how to glue to facilitate easier painting. the interior is split between two halves with the 'door/fan' plate remaining loose.
The nose sectionis now all glued together but initially the inner iris with the melta on was one bit, the outer ring seperate, the inner ring did have the drill supports glued in with poly cement though. leaving the drills and ploughs seperate too. once painted they were then assembled with superglue.
getting the drill supports at the right angle required a bit of tactical thinking. they had to be a good angle to look in the right place (so you can still see the mega-melta) but also allow me to get the drills in/on after painting.
had to prop and wedge them as the poly cement dried so as not to allow any drift that would ruin symmetry.
also the tracks needed a trim hither and yon so that the body would fit properly.
painting was another story. four sittings (generally between 6-9 hrs) tackling a section at a time.
first the nose. with all the drills irises and rings and the dozer blades.
then the rear hatch in/out, the tracks and inner door/fan hatch.
then the interior and tools,
finally the outer sides.
slow but worth the methodical approach. easy to get over-amped to see it all done and rush it at the end. resisted that on this one.
of course a sensible person would just glue the ass and nose on in the first place then paint it all in one go. but who ever said I was sensible.
in other news new job starts today... lets hope this one works out for me better than the last one did...
*pushes up glasses* just gonna say I knew what it was from the drill sneak, but I've been off Dakka for a bit so
I'm always happy to see 40k hobbyists juice up this model, and wow have you ever with that interior! I would have been completely content with the paint job, weathering and tasty melta.
today I fancied trying something new, effects-wise, so I dug this old-boy out and did it on him as he was the ideal candidate:
its an attempt at plasmaglow and basic (real basic) osl.
not great i'll grant you but I blame the sloppiness of the finish on it being my first attempt and the generally low definition/quality of the older sculpt.
I feel this will be better on a newer sculpt with much more refined detailing on the 'ribbing' of the coil. the blending on the gasmask is a bit stark too, could have done with a bit more blending up the mask but, this practice-go was more about the gun than anything else...
you'll just have to wait and see if this gets used on another model in the future...
for now I'm still unconvinced...
perhaps its just not me...
I think this OSL effect came out most excellently- well done! Plasma-glow effect is something I've tried once or twice, but never got results as good as this. Rock on!
I think It needs more contrast between the darkest and lightest.
More blue tones on the darker bits and much more subtle glow on the osl effect on the other parts of the model that aren't the gun itself.
my brush got away with me there. and once it started I had to finish. anyway. this is the gold standard:
and this is nice too:
love the drill transport! That OSL Gold Std example looks like its just white wash applied over a particular shade of light blue underneath. Surely not impossible to reach?
tauist wrote: ...That OSL Gold Std example looks like its just white wash applied over a particular shade of light blue underneath. Surely not impossible to reach?
HA! if only!
many MANY layers of glazes and washes went into that one. I watched the tutorial. hours and hours of work.
would cost me about £50 in new paints and tools etc to do that verbatim. but I'll come up with something close I hope.
what I did already was twelve or so layers of blending and glazing with skull-white, ice blue, hawk tawkoise and black to shade...
More bluey blues on the next one methinks. take a lot more time and, as I say, be very VERY subtle on the glowing on bits that arent the gun itself.
the target model I'm intending this on (a pending conversion I'm awaiting bits on) has a very small coil thats not right next to everything else on the model, facilitating much less need for displaced blue glow everywhere. the Steel legionaire is practically stooped over the coil, which in turn is pretty huge too so thats the only reason that I did that as much as I did anyway...
oh, and thanks about the 'badger'... its my current favourite vehicle too!
The Badger is great, especially the inside of it. Always appreciate it when folks go for details that 90% of the time will go entirely unnoticed, but they'd know are there
Sherrypie wrote: ...details that 90% of the time will go entirely unnoticed, but they'd know are there
got it in one SP!
still, this model is not entirely glued. allowing it to be dissasembled somewhat and split along its spine to closely view the interior either side if need be. plus simply pulling off the ass-end allows you to peek inside and see the interior in its entirety too so, yeah. not 100% hidden but as you say, 90% LOL
true, though, that if I'd not done it, it would have niggled at me that I'd not...
anyway, a couple more done:
as you can see its the reloading guy and the sgt.
the sgt has had more work done to him since his wip days.
the pistol has been swapped out from cadian patteren to catachan design. its much sleeker and its sideways mag assembly a nice reference to the mags on the stormtrooper's rifles.
also I added a holster for it to his waist.
it comes from the scout legs and I chose it because it is modelled empty and it hangs nice on this model, not being too large.
also, in hindsight I thought I'd mention that I've elected not to use OSL on the upcoming plasmagunner model I have in mind.
in all truth its not my strongest point and, yeah I could practice or what have you, but in truth the cartoonesque style it gives a mini is so far from the grimey, wartorn grubbiness of this regiment I think it would take away more than it adds in the end...
But, its not all lost. the steel legionaire is a fair example of the effect, a one off that was a fun diversion to do if nothing else.
I think I'll do the coils in a copper/bronze finish instead... or perhaps even ceramic... we shall see...
Wow, another homerun of a project OSJC! I've been very inspired by your Space Sharks and this looks like it's in the same level of awesomeness! The whole army seems to be a mix of GW, 3rd party and scratch-built bits, as well as old and new models, yet they all fit together seamlessly. I'm envious of your seemly bottomless bits box and your skill to use it! Not to mention the speed at which you finish of models with a complex, high standard paintjobs...
Regarding the OSL attempt: I think you're spot-on with the gun itself - it looks positively glowing! The OSL effect itself is way too bright. It seems like it has the same intensity as the source, which should never happen. The key is to be subtle, as you said, especially as the miniature is depicted at daytime. I think your decision to not use the effect is not a bad one. I think highlighting the edges of the gun casing around the coils with a blueish color would be enough for a subtle effect!
I don't know which tutorial you used for your painting, but I've been looking at one from Tale of Painters and waiting for an opportunity to try it out. Looks very similar to your "gold standard" example, but I don't think it's the same.
thanks mcmattila.
yep mostly 3rd party troops with gw weaps and vehicles/artillery. well aside the tunneller...
the only gw figure is the artilleryman made from a steel legionaire. the osl legionaire is not actually part of the force though. just a practice model for the initial paintjob test.
the rest is +/- anvil. with the occasional gw torso/arm hither and yon.
as for the plasma; yes, the 'gold stadard' is the ToP one, but I did not follow that for my attempt.
I dont own half the paints for one...
I just did my own thing.
I only spent five minutes on it (as the model was already fully painted before I started) and got very bored of it very quickly.
I wont be returning to it...
In hindsight its just as feel about nmm... overly applauded and very, very niche and elitist.
...Ive had a go, sure, but its definately not my bag...
thanks illumini, its actually pea-dot not flectarn but I appreciate the sentiment!
So my new job has me working some rather odd hours, all over the gaffe, short, long, late and early. nothing set and its getting to me. I need a more predictable scedule to function properly and this is my excuse for not getting much painted of late.
still the construction/converting continues here and there when i find the time and I've a few WIP's to show for my sleep deprived efforts;
I decided, although a good model, I did not like the beret wearing guy in my company command squad after all.
I think its that he takes too much away from the Major, who is, himself rather understated.
So I figured rather than do anything to it (as I say, it's a good model in its own right) I'd simply make a couple of optionals that can be fielded as and if I fancy some more specialist firepower other than lasguns in the commander's retinue. leaving him as an optional rifleman should I want a team of just lasguns...
anyway, I decided on first modelling a plasmagun:
Rather than use the standard sized plasmagun that most guard models used (based on the second/third edition marine weapon model) I'd cook up something that looks more appropriately sized for a guardsman to carry.
Now, I loved the metal cadian specialists that held the plasmas and meltas like mini versions of the marine devastators, little backpacks, carry handles and hoses, yes, I could have used the anvil stuff to replicate this look but I fancied something rather portable and less movement restrictive for my commandos.
I figured on the primaris plasma pistol as that's easy to come by and bigger than a standard plas pistol but not too small to be a 'full' plasma-gun.
The simple addition of the 'classic' plasma stock was vital to make it look big enough.
I used a metal one as its somewhat slimmer than the new plastic ones and as such fits the pistol perfectly and also helps keep the overly weighty look to a minimum.
for ammo and kit I decided on the sniper pellet/capsule thingys from the sniper scouts as stand-ins for plas capsules and the big-slung-bag from the arms-master as care-kit or batteries and all that jazz...
the trigger-finger at-ease and low-slung pose keeps a sense of menace and 'tacti-cool' the rest o the squad has. lovely.
next up is a sniper commando.
This was a deliberate attempt to recreate the sniper rifles seen on guard mini's of the third edition era. (seen most prominently on the catachan snipers, last-chancer's 'scope' model and the fw tank commander sniper)
they had their own thing that was, cleary based on a lasgun, but still different from the scout sniper rifle that allt he modern ones look more like these days. they had an extended stock, the top-sight removed and a large scope in its stead and an incorporated silencer/muzzle.
the magazines were not even modelled on, and were simple left blank. suggesting at an internal mag or single-load setup.
many of the minis they featured on were modelled with bullets about their person on bandoliers and belts, thus, they were also not actually las weapons, but solid slug munition rifles.
sorry, history lesson over...
So, to replicate the look I used a kantrael (cadian) las and removed the barrel and top sight.
the eagle was shaved off, and the stock trimmed to the shape shown in the pic.
the barrel design was replicated with brass and ali tube and the scope is lifted from a primaris stalker rifle assembly lengthened with plasicard rod.
the las-mag was removed and the bottom slap-plate (flat part) of the bolter-mag glued stright on, suggesting at a small capacity internal mag.
to enhance this look, I used a small bolt-mag stowage from the 30k marine range as part of his kit.
the skull on the stock is shaved off a marine backpack I believe (cant honestly remember for sure but any will do)
this is actually not vital in any way but I feel it helps makes it look more like an actual sniper-rifle mini and not the butchered lasgun it really isLOL the finishing touch was the greenstuff over the skeletal stock that anvil fatigue arms always feature in order to make it look like the solid-lump stocks of the plastic catachan lasguns that the 3rd edition sniper rifles also had.
I did the trigger finger thing again and added the infiltrator pockets as a backpack and the chain/rope detail, again from the arms-master kit to suggest at some climbing gear or whatever so he can get 'up-high' where snipers operate best at...
again, as with the plasma, I'm rather pleased with the work on the gun on this one. although a bit shorter its still very faithfull to the source material its based on.
As you've no-doubt noticed, I'm rather nostalgic of third edition guardsmen. the best era for guard in my opinion. just look how many regiments we had then and how many special units like the last-chancers and good charecters there were. not to mention the steel legion. without those back in 99/2000 we'd never have got to the dkok we got this year...
It all went wrong with the pastic cadians IMHO... never undertood why they went for the starship trooper look over the theme of the classic ones.
but thats another story...
This got my dander up for the whole sniper thing.
Although the modern design rifle is fine on this commando amongst his friends with the fancy bullpup rifles, I now fancied doing something a little more obviously a sniper thats more in theme with the whole trenchy theme the main part of the force.
that meant all of the 'lone sniper' tropes, cape, long rifle, looking cool somewhere high with the wind in their hair... you know the GW standard for snipers these days. purest cheese but a lot of fun to model.
keeping the whole 'enemy at the gates' mythos in mind this guy is much more diesel-punk than the commando sniper.
His massive rifle is from the whf imperial handgunners and as such is simply absurdly huge.
I mean theres no way you could fire this thing without laying down is there?
The simple inclusion of a las-muzzle and mag made it clearly a long-las and the scope is from a bolt-rifle, deliberately not the stalker variant to keep the rifle looking longer than it is. the small scope helps to do this.
The cape is a pennant from the ravenwing sprue grafted onto the 'poncho' torso from the irregulars from anvil.
I chose a head without a mask, for more character that seeing his eyes gives, but scuplted a scarf over his face for the whole 'stranger in this town' look that the whole poncho and mask thing create when used together.
espescially with the brodie helmet that also helps as its rather reminisent to a cowboy hat with the above context in mind...
anyway, I hope to get some time to slap some paint on more of these badboys soon.
I did get round to one thing, though.
I took the two crouching guys from the riflemen I've done so far and removed the 3rd ed tactical-squad pockets off them and replaced them with more infiltrator leg-pockets so the squad matches properly.
looking at them just the other day I felt the tactical squad pockets looked so crude against those nice leg-pocket backpacks I've used throughout the force they just had to go.
I only used them as I'd ran out of infiltrator pockets at the time.
I think they just show their age these days. I mean even the mkiv version of these pockets from the 30k plastics are a much crisper, slimmer and cleaner sculpt than the old third ed pastics and as asuch are a much better match for the infiltrator pockets I've been using.
even still, I won't be using too many of those either as I managed to get a load more infiltrator ones from craig over at bitzbox and a further bunch from ebay too so I'm all stocked up now.
I have used other stuff true, a pair of marine 'triplet' pockets of the same sprue still makes a nice alternative, true but is nowhere near as ugly as the large double pocket...
The heavy intercessor and standard intercessor pockets are of course a perfect match but then they would be funny aint it. I bet most of the rest of you didn't even give them a second thought, have you? but its been bugging me since i firs painted them... LOL
osjclatchford wrote: His massive rifle is from the whf imperial handgunners and as such is simply absurdly huge. I mean theres no way you could fire this thing without laying down is there?
I love the attention to detail on the coversions here. Whether the bases, the tweaks to the guns, or the critique of POUCHES, you are an absolute madman in your commitment to your vision. This is incredibly inspirational for all guard players and thanks for sharing
hmm... possible, but I fear it would make it seem even more rediculously huge. I'll give it some thought though. twould indeed make more sense
Illumini wrote: Right, flecktarn is apparently a newer design. You learn something every day The pics in the last post are not showing up for me
sorry if that came off as teaching you to suck eggs... any patronising was not intended. also, odd about the pics. ok now? the latest on this post showing ok?
IGtR= wrote: I love the attention to detail on the coversions here. Whether the bases, the tweaks to the guns, or the critique of POUCHES, you are an absolute madman in your commitment to your vision. This is incredibly inspirational for all guard players and thanks for sharing
thanks for recognising the efforts gone into this force.
its knida my way of doing a force that actually looks like it would have been an actual regiment that gw would/could have released at the ass-end of 3rd edition.
hence all the ott efforts on the continuity and design features on the conversions, including the absurdity of geting the pockets to look "just-right", yes, ok, I'll concede that there is no real excuse for the pocket thing is there, thats just next level ocd's in action isnt it?
I think I'm just really REALLY committed to getting this army to look exactly as I see it in my mind's eye. without any compromise on bits and stuff needed to make it happen.
for instance I just spent four quid getting a set of heads from anvil that I'll only use one of off the sprue.
yes, just one! but its a real good one...
madness considering my financial crisis I'm in at present but I NEED THAT BIT!
It's just like my spacesharks project, that was like a way of taking all I've learnt doing marine armys of all sorts over the years and making a difinitive one that ticks all my boxes. now thats done I cant really see me going back to marines again. no need to really now as far as I'm concerned. thats good enough; been there done that...
but then there is truescale chaos to consider... (thats another story)
so far I've been incredibly lucky with bits I had left from the aforemntioned sharks and the royston rifles but also with kind donations and helping hands for bits hither and yon. your suggestions and support you've all given on all my projects is a huge nudge to do better too.
bit dry on here of late, but rest assured, I have been doing stuff here and there...
I just haven't taken any pics till now...
another two riflemen.
one on guard and another with the obligitory grenade chucking pose every infantry squad always has.
In truth I'm not at all happy with that pose (the running legs perhaps?)
But, meh, its those ten infantry done, now, anyhow...
yes an IG army needs more than four of those squads, minimum to be any good but this is a painting and modelling collection of a few select units, not a gaming force.
consider each squad an example of what would be in a full army...
yes, I'll try to make each unit legal and playable in its own right, sure.
I think its fine to go modelling extras and optional models that can be swapped out for different eapon load-outs etc... (like the company command squad; so far that has seven models that can be swapped about to make the five man team in different configurations)
but, look, its got to have some caveats to keep it centred in some sense. otherwise it would just be a bunch of disperate, yet cool models that make no sense, and that would break my ocd's reign of terror!
but yeah. I'd rather be painting different and interesting units tbh...
Put it this way, If I'm never to game with it, why would I waste time painting a bunch of boring infantry over and over again when there's more exciting units and characters awaiting in the wings..?
such as the platoon command squad:
platoon command medic.
the platoon command Lt
these two are part of the same squad.
note the aforementioned colour coded helmet detail colour designation, white/red for medic and green/bronze for lieutenant...
In this squad also goes the first-sgt with the knuckleduster.
oh, and the sniper and grenade launcher guys that I'm yet to get done...
perhaps those two next?
and then, for something completely different, theres this:
I figured as my company command squad is made up of those bebbanburg commandos that share a few likenesses with the elysian droptroops, (bullpup lasgun carbines etc...) twas a good enough excuse to get myself one of these lovely rotary mortars from anvil.
a damn fine proxy for the accatran pattern auto-mortar, no?
I decided on a simple 25mm base so I can technically choose to run it with any squad I choose.
So why not 50mm like the other heavies? I run those the same way?
well in truth I'd none of those 50mm left but also, I rather like how it enforces the smaller, compact staure of the launcher.
hell, its almost 'cute!' if mortars can even be called cute that is?
its squat compact nature makes me tink of a tiny, baby bomard!
the mortar loading artilleryman with the neophyte arms
note the sculpted pad on the left arm. ok the pose is a little bit meh, but whattayagonnado?
yes he does have mismatched elbow pads... yes that still annoys me that I didnt notice till half way through painting him...
platoon command squad final members
sniper.
the simple addition of the boltrifle scope to his las-rifle means this model's weapon could simply count as a regular rifle or a sniper rifle, depending on the mission...
grenade launcher.
modelled to have a shorter barrel and extending stock to mirror the steel legion one somewhat.
I also prefer the gsc's launcher over the cadian/catachan one as it has the classic looking induvidual grenade slots, instead of the big-ass blocky drum on the kantrael pattern model.
the obligitory full-squad shot
not bad at all in the end...
as you can see I swapped out the head.
I went for this van saar one that looks like Paul Anderson as Arthur Shelby wearing flight goggles!
In fact, it's rather apt that he looks like Arthur Shelby as the Shelby's and co. fought as sappers and tunnel rats in the great war, making such a reference ideal for the 39thers.
Not only that, but in 'game of shadows' (the second robert downy-mildue sherlock outing) he played Colonel Sebastian Moran, and used a rediculous steam-punk rifle not so dissimilar to this 'un he has modelled here. happy coincidence, says I!
As he was without his lid/mask I simply fitted them to his belt.
the pose is inspired by a shot of Jude Law as russian sniper Vasilly zaytzev in 'enemy at the gates'.
Instead of the plain old green canvas smock I insted decided to ressurect the old 111st Royston Rifles flectarn cammo but to my new standard of highlighting.
alas, the lighting in this pic hmakes it almost indifined against the more beige peadot, but rest assured it is green. albeit with extra highlights of zandri dust on the extreme/ripped edges to emulate dyed cloth.
Oh, but I had done this extra on my royston rifles, eh? they'd have been a much better looking force if I had.
nevermind.
lesson learnt.
as Bob Ross always said, "I hope you're plagued with dissatisfaction as a painter..." It makes you excel to improve, you see...
Now its painted, the astartes scope and lasgun muzzle/mag on the handgunner musket works just fine.
I was still on the fence about this looking convincing but I feel its added some antiquity and gravitas to it. A relic of the armoury that still shoots truer than most... almost like its a beloved personal weapon...
as suggested by Arakasi I did elect to add a simple bipod to make some more sense out of it. (you were right, of course)
Note that its just made out of simple fusewire offcuts to keep it slim and mirror the style of the bipods on the old third edition guard sniper models.
put those cards down, hide the crap-dice, put away that porno-slate and dig out your primer, the Commissar's coming!
based on the incredibly detailed "wargame exclusive" 'Iron' commissar, with the simple addition of an anvil industries' trench officer head to match the 39thers and the inclusion less specific base.
This was made from a 32mm with my usual gs/crackle and bits, some barbed wire, and this time featuring some added rubble (from an infiltrator marine model) so that his raised foot made some sense...
this pic's not doing it much justice in truth.
pisspoor light here and I've just noticed that bit on the belt where the metal has 'leaked' onto the leather... gotta fix that afore next time...
well, its well overdue that the 39th had some heavy hitting infantry in the ranks.
send in the ogryns!
As you can see, anvil industries finally got round to making some ogryns in the trencher theme.
I snapped them up asap and got around to making them fit with the 39th as best I could.
I chose the lewis themed ripper-gun, as it fit the british theme perfectly.
the big pocket is ogryn-sprue and the small one is from the palanite enforcers. they match so well I felt I'd be a fool not to use them. also its fun that they are used on the regular infantry as backpacks! guess that shows just how big these big-boys are...
rather than use the ogryn specific grenades, I instead used the frag-charges I previously used on my veteran infantry (made from cut-down goliath grenades). I felt this was a fun idea, that the meltabomb sized infantry frag-charges are nout but grenades to ogryn hands!
to reference the old artwork and older models I elected to add some bullet-belt details.
rather than use the oversized ogry ones, I instead used the slightly smaller, yet identically designed ones from the new ork snagga sprue...
these look as though they'd be more likely to fit inside the gun's mag (but, yes they are still a little too big for that).
as ripperguns are traditionally semi-automatic shotguns, I painted the shells with red casing as a reference to this and also as a pleasant pop of colour.
The skull on the chest is from the imperial-guard vehicle sprue (the one with the eagle wings. I had previously used those on my bfg ship conversions years ago)
whilst painting it I had a bugger of a time getting the eyes and face done to my standards. In fact I decided after painting it to make a change on the other two, see here:
bit of a cowson to get the gun-raised pose but well worth it in the end.
theres also more bulletbelts and grenades on the backs, but you'll see that when they're all painted.
I just love these models. the fact that the stock of the lewis/shotguns are an axe-blade is a great feature and the fact that you can get all different themed heads and kit for them is great.
This range of options is only likely to improve as anvil adds more over time...
Thanks guys, yes, Guardling, its true, the anvil ogryns are much more properly proportioned than the gw or even the vickky lamb ones. I'll have to get a good scale shot up for you when the squad's done...
But for today I have painted the bebbenburg commando with the 3rd edition style sniper rifle;
Been a bit of time since my last post, I know.
The build up to the yuletide festivities has meant that work has occupied my waking hours more than I care for at present, making finding time and daylight to paint a pain...
anyway, my hands have been busy last night model-doodling other stuff though;
some bits for an upcoming large(ish) model conversion I have in mind for some-time next year...
I would love to see those Ogryn next to some normal guys to get a sense of the scale, they look like really great sculpts and you did a great paint job on them!
So, seems my Mrs popped over to PigIron to get me some bits for this yuletide clamdig!
some Kolony militia HQ models, with anvil brodie heads make the ideal artillery crew for my big guns.
I couldn't resist putting one of the spare brodie lids on the helper droid...
Also a pair of furry missiles for the bebbanburg commandos.
these are from their stalker range...
as you can see that's initial clean-up and basing done already.
but thats not all thats new 'on the bench'...
Well, I wasn't going to, but I might eventually give it a shot.
once all the squads are full and done though. still quite a few gaps hither and yon amongst the squads. and in truth there's not a huge amount to show.
lets break it all down, why not:
As I mentioned before there is only one ten man infantry/rifle squad and a five man infantry command squad. (just an example really)
theres the five man shotgun veterans, the five man grenadiers/stormtrooper squad, five man company command (well, seven with modelled weapon option models)
five heavy weapon bases (no crews), three ogryns, five mixed artillery crew, an earthshaker (thats still awaiting its to-be-converted tow vehicle), bombard, badger excavator-drill, quadbike, nebelwerfer, commissar, the two fur-missiles and I'd planned on a griffon conversion in the future too...
so , yeah when you list it like that, it sounds a lot but is not really but, even so, I've not really anywhere in this tiny house to get a shot of it all at once in any real quality so Its not something I'd ever even try to do.
as with the spacesharks...
the squad shots will just have to suffice.
I just cant see the point of a blurry grainy pic of a bunch of models crammed together on a table too small for them with no terrain...
as you can see Billy is a classic German Shepherd coloring and is named thusly after a certain Mr. Blazcowicz...
Dietritch, on the other hand, is an attempt at a Belgian Malinois, in reference to Dita the hair-missile-dog, well known for playing Cerberus
on Sealteam: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9318536/ rather happy with these pups! really good models to paint.
SO, I'd planned on getting some back-log painted over the next couple of days, then Its pissing down this morning... no spray-priming for me then...
also, my Steel legion drab is in need of a replacement too so thats painting out of the window today...
Ah, well, guess I'll just have a rumble about inthe old bitzbox and make use of the anvil leftovers I have to knock-up some tasty veterans:
The Rioteer.
Taking the name of the melee enemies from Malice for quake, this guy is a re-imagining of the 'rioteer' sgt from my 111st Royston Rifles 'darkeyes' stormtroopers, but with a Eoforwich take on it.
using gsc arms and weapons (neophyte and jackals kits) with some wrist rearangement and a simple whittled bat added on.
the uzi-style autopistol is a nod to malice's uzi and just-so fits the style of a bludgeoning close-combat monster.
His jacket/gillet is a reference to Andy Serkis' character from the film 'Deathwatch'
a very appropriate inspiration for not only the character, but also the trench theme of the army as a whole.
the actual pose is shamelessly stolen from the doom-eternal slayer promo shots, you know, this one:
Either consider him as an alternative/replacement to the current stormtrooper sgt or perhaps even an Eoforwich Sly Marbo?
"hmmm"
Then theres this guy
Yes I finally got round to using one of those nice Ksg shotguns, this time on a bebbanburg commando.
its a nice design that matches the 'York pattern' bullpup lascarbine they wield and its rather similar to the genii shotgun somewhat too:
allbeit bullpup, not fullstock...
Inquisitor Lady Lucinda Ravenwood - Ordo Hereticus
Raised under the tutelage of Inquisitor Gideon Sumption, Lucinda burned with a desire to avenge her fallen parents, slain in a chaos raid on her homeworld of Filey Secondus, in the Eoforwich system.
After many years, much training, several hundred burnt witches, heretics and mutants, not to mention the eventual sucessfull hunting and summery-destruction of the chaos warlord responsible for the scourging of many worlds, including that of Filey, Inquisitor Sumption decreed that Lucinda had proved herself to be worthy to be more than his acolyte and sent her off with the well earned title of Lady Inqisitor.
Her vengeance fullfilled, a lot of her near-fanatical zeal has been sated to the point that Ravenwood is considered rather more level-headed than usually expected for a member of the Ordo Hereticus.
Don't be fooled, she takes the job of heresy hunting very seriously, but prefers subterfuge, guile and thorough investigation, prior to elimination of targets.
thats where a few of her personal tricks of the trade come in.
Like her temperament, her wargear is surprisingly pragmatic for one of her order.
Her characteristic Crossbow incorporates a powered core, capable of heating the black-adamantium 'Slayer bolts' to extreme temperatures, allowing them to pass through the thickest of armour protection prior to eliminating the target.
Of course, the blessings and various nerotoxins within can't hurt as far as heretic purging is concerned, but the only thing more satisfying than a dead heretic is an impaled-burning dead heretic...
other than that, she sticks to a simple bolt pistol as a sidearm, albeit with varying specialised ammo and her trademark stiletto blade for up close and personal.
her current investigations have brought Lady-lucy back home to Eoforwich system. only time will tell what she will find there...
As you can see this is based off of the ven denst witchhunter girl from the AOS range.
As I loved the crossbow, I simply added a lasgun mag beneath then made up that crap about the 'slayer bolts' to explain it away.
The simple inclusion of the mk3 boltpistol holster also helped make it more 40k than whf...
I removed the extra sword and stake detail as stakes are for vampires and thus cement it in the fantasy setting more. so I figured the bolt shells from the deathwatch sprue was the best way of adding something there that made it feel 40k without looking too slapped on.
the final detail was the bronze Inquisition pendant that is made from a crux terminatus charm off of a primaris shoulder pad, with the side parts of the cross removed.
I decided, as she was back home in the Eoforwich system, why not give her a bit of the 39th colourscheme here and there. Her green armour perhaps suggests that she's working with the guard regiment, maybe she got that from the 39th quartermasters store?
meh, whatever the reason it helps make it seem less fantasy and more diesel-punk. which is what I wanted. plus it helps her with blending in with the army more...
yes. she does need better shots to show off the wargear more. Believe me, I took many but the light was poor when I took these, these were the only ones in focus...
The Inquisitor looks superb, great match for the army and a particularly great job on her face, from what we can see of it. Her tech level is very in line with the rest of your Guard, savvy call on the mini.
got the pig-iron robit conversion done:
and yes its a servitor not a droid...
before anyone starts on all the imperial decrees banning autonomous artificial intelligences. its a servitor.
it has a human brainstem and spinal cord inside an artificial body.
(think cain in robocop2...) ;D
With the apparrent success of the additon of advisors from both the Commissariat and the Inquisition to this army project, I have decided to turn my sights onto the adeptus mechanicus next.
Yes, Ive still several squads worth of other guys to get done, I know but I just can't resist a good conversion on the side!
The Tech-priest/adept I have planned is not quite ready for public viewing yet, but here are a couple of her charges:
as you can see this is essentially her personal side-arm! (why have a dog and bark yourself, eh?)
clearly based off of the devastator squad servo-skull, with added las-muzzle on the right side lens and a nice mechadendrite tail made from guitar-wire with a bit of enforcer grenade on the end as a plug/port.
this one was more invloved, conversion-wise.
the more die-hard of my project followers will remember that I used the Indomitus boxed-set primaris ancient standard bearer guy as a basis for a fallen angel conversion.
as that model no longer used the banner it came with, the skull of the skeleton upon it was donated to this servo-skull.
Its hybrid bone/metal design and the addition of ports and lens' made it ideal for the job!
a few guitar strings, some fuse wire, a bit of brass tube and some bits of bfg aerials as plugs/ports and this one was done!
the bases for these two are actually buttons.
I deliberately wanted something smaller than 25mm to base them on.
these are around 16mm.
I've always felt that servo skulls and tiny familiar bases should be smaller to represent the smaller model upon them. This just makes more visual sense and stops the model looking lost or somehow unimportant on them.
Also I personally can't stand servo skulls tacked onto the same base or off-the-shoulder on a model. thats pure tackiness!
The other advantage of these conversions, over the standard gw models is, using guitar wire, I can make them really fly high over the models, I wanted the laspistol one in particular to look as though it is soaring around the magos in a protective holding-pattern, provinding cover-fire, whereas the other is simply gently whizzing directly along in a forward motion.
the guitar-string mechadendrites really makes the sense of motion easier to capture. They bend relitively easy and are seamless as far as ad-mech tech visuals go.
For extra advise on moddleling these I'd say go look at how a sentinel in any of the matrix films moves. Try to emulate the look of the mechadendrites for the motion you wish to portray and you wont go far wrong...
painted shots soon and their master is soon to follow...
yup its a cyber cherub!
but not one of those cute little babies-with-wings one's that you see accompanying the adeptus sororitas and the eclesiarchial gang, this is a truly grim-dark, servo-skulled, blanchitsu inspired monstrosity of a cyber construct.
Its made from the body of the Kairic Acolyte's Vulcharc familiar with a servo skull head, that's actually one of the hewn skulls from the chaos vehicle spikey sprue. I chose that one for the rank looking lank hair stuck on it and the eye in the socket, that, alonside the cracked skull would be ideal to represent a half metal skull with eye lens when painted.
Oh, yeah there's also guitar string/bfg aerial mechadendrites as on the sevo-skulls I did afore. but your eyes work, don't need me to point this out...
heres a wip shot that shows off the greestuffing I did to blend the skull to the body, extenuate the hair hither and thither and also put 'ports' under the skin where the mecadenrdrites emerge:
the resultant creature is one that is much more grim-dark and much less cutesy. at first glace your like 'oh an owl or something', then you look closer and its like 'ARGH!, jeez inquisitor, whats wrong with your baby!'
Now, As much as I'd like to, I cant take all the credit for this idea really.
The inspiration comes from Neil Reed who created something very similar for the Lesotho blanchitsu campaign.
see pg113, WD dec 2018...
now, its been a bit of a while.
reason being I've had another change of vocation, yes, yet again.
I've had at least four different jobs in the last year or so, tiding me over till I find something suitable to my needs/skillset.
Till now I've been hopping from different retail and other crappy jobs but I finally found a position thats normal hours. 9hrs a day 4 an a 1/2 days a week.
thats half day friday and the weekend free. end-of.
no more of this shifts at all kinds of wanky hours of the night, 4 or so hours here and there, 30 hours one week, then just 11 the next, I mean what the hell man, its all over the gaffe.
How can you be expected to live on this nonsense?
'enough of that crap' says I and off I goes.
I'm now in an industry I've been interested in since I was in pre-teen years; Manufacturing-Engineering!
As I say, It's something I always had interest and quite a bit of some physical skill in, but could never get into it, education-wise, as my poor mathmatical skills had me set-back and refused at the first hurdle.
I'm of a make-do-and-mend/artist mindset, not a purely-logical mathmatical kind of guy. as such engineering has always been sadly out of reach for me.
however, quarter of a century (or so) years later and this opportunity at Biddle & Mumford Gears has me working on beautiful old machines, some from the 1920's! making gears and machining parts to a fine degree of quality and precision to all kinds of varied companies worldwide!
Its a foot in the door I never thought I'd get at my age, a chance in a million as far as I'm concerned.
They are giving me on site training with highly skilled operatives, most of who have worked at the firm for a minimum of 20 years each!
or to put it short; I'm now a Cog-Boy, Literally!LOL
anyway, why tell you all this? well aside the joy of it, its worth mentioning that predictible hours and the return of free weekends mean that you should expect updates from me +/- once a week now. weather permitting for spray-painting!
also, the regular weekly pay and proper hours should mean that I might even be able to get out of the red and back in the black. meaning that new purchases are not just something that are just out of reach financially. I mean you gotta eat and pay the rent first...
Guess I'll know at the end of the month once I've had (by then) the first three weeks wages from the cog-boys and the last outstanding wages from the last retail job, that was monthly pay (stupid for such low-paid short hours).
so, digression aside, the first weekend free since unemployment gets you this:
The bebbenburg commando standard bearer for the command HQ squad.
As you can see, I've modelled him proudly gazing up at the regiment's colours, fully enraptured with martial zeal! as much as he can look for someone in a gasmask anyway (FYI, this was the model I had looking up at the ogryn before, just without his banner for that shot)
It's also a pose many will remember from the Royston-Rifles command squad banner-dude I did back for the 111st. (a model in turn inspired by Apologist's Lambs-worlders)
This time I used a triangular needle-file to remodel the catachan arm to mimic the folds of sleeves on the shoulder and then simply painted the hand as a gloved one. easy!
The rifle arm was a bit of a bitch to get right, hacking at both the sleeve, the rifle and even the molle-vest at the waist to get the 'integral' look that makes the model seem to have been modelled that way properly, not just slapped together. In truth, I probably could have done a better job of the hand with a full sculpt, but in the end, I went for the cadian sgt chainsword holding hand, so I could pitch the carbine round thusly, then just sculpted on the trigger finger in the desired position. easier and the resultant odd-looking grip on the inside cannot be seen without inverting the model anyway. thats good enough for me, saves two hours of pointless work anyhow, leaves more time for other stuff! LOL the anvil sculpts made the head tilt a doddle, just a bit of gs under the neck-joint.
the kit on his waist is necromunda enforcer nades for the high-tech/custom-kit look of a veteran and the pocket is a big-un from the heavy intersessor sprue because it matches all the other pockets Ive used on these commandos...
A much better interpretation of the original idea in the 111st.
Its painted better too of course, if I do say so myself that is...
Pyroalchi wrote: Looks great as usual. The pose is really natural. And congrats to the new job!
Guardling wrote: Nice banner, and yay for getting a regular hour job with steady income, just think of all the bits you can buy soon...
thanks guys!
believe me, I have purchases planned! LOL future conversion fodder in the pipeline include:
- veteran guardsmen (plastic dkok)
- Goliath Truck
- Manticore/deathstrike
- More anvil bits (heads for the veteran dkok minis, obviously but other bits too numerous/varied to mention all of here might yet happen too!)
however. It just occurred to me to point how how incredibly blessed I feel at finding and scoring this new job.
believe me when I say I don't take it for granted and also trust me when I say I've more than paid my dues these last two years to get to this point right now.
forced, un-paid redundancy, unemployement, unappreaciated employment and barely-even-properly employed-ment, has been the road to get here.
not to mention, meal-skipping, local odd-jobbing, selling of treasured and/or inherited irreplaceable posessions and sleeping in the cold to pay the rent has been just a few of the obsticles in the way on said road.
I just didn't want anyone reading that, who's in(or been in) a similar situation, or someone who's not for that matter, to think I'm attempting to illicit sympathy or rubbing-into-the-noses of those without work.
hard times are on us all, I know that. and with the (minimal) 55% increase in council-tax, gas, electricity, national insurance, rent and petrol int he next two months on the way, its only likely to get harder.
with luck overtime will be available by then once/if I'm skilled enough to do so at that point...
If you, too are in the cycle of shyte-jobs/no jobs. you hang in there and most of all; hang tough.
just keep punching and kicking and slugging at it till it keels over and you get what you need to get by.
failure is not an option...
I’m really pleased to see your news, bruv. Well done. And ur right - plenty of peeps in similar circumstances and you came across just fine.
If you’re grieving any particular treasures then I would suggest listing them on your sale thread as a ‘Would Trade’ option - that way peeps could see and you might get lucky.
Recent hobby goodness looking stellar as ever - sorry I haven’t been commenting much! Your standard bearer made me chuckle - it’s a great pose but the closest I have to this is a guardsmen screaming his head off and running desperately towards the enemy!
cheers! a couple of weeks in and the negatives of the job are starting to appear a bit, I wont lie. but, tbh the positives still outweigh them all at the minute so on I plug!
put it this way. I wouldn't leave it for anything less than something better or if they got rid of me themselves! (but I assume I'd have to be hoplessly useless for them to do that) so so far so good...
anyway, got the last of the pig-iron guys done today:
grumpy old artillery officer
artilleryman with trajectory cogitator unit
was quite fun painting these metal models.
as with the old steel legion artilleryman conversion I did, these too have a nostalgic vibe of the nineties guard metals about them thats very familiar to paint for those of thus of a certain age!
All-told, not a bad fit for the other 39th guy once painted, eh?
You’ve done some fine work with those Pig Iron pieces - this latest figure looks excellent.
Did you need to drill a hole for the Anvil Industry head ‘lug’ to fit? 3mm? The Pig Iron necks are very shallow so I’m assuming you had to work some of your magic!
and @Ragsta, no, no special stuff done. Just cut the necks down flush with a pair of clippers.
then just glue them with superglue or use a tiny dot of gs... easy really...
So, I've failed to get anything painted this weekend.
but in all honesty, the storm left me spending friday afternoon and the last day and a half on my roof replacing fallen slates, in my garden repairing wrecked fencing and down my landlord's clearing fallen trees, so fairs fair, nothing to show with any paint on today. :(
I did get the last two bebbenburg commandos undercoated (the plasma and silencer guys) but no further than that as of yet.
so instead I've decided to treat you all to a WIP shot of my upcoming techpriest magos:
Originally I was going to wait till after paint but never mind, this is a fair teaser shot and its a good way of showing off all the bits.
based on a female necromunda delaque mini, as I decided that theres no way that she was going to get her lovely robes all dirty in the filthy trenches that the 39th are fighting in, so has opted for a nice heavy leather duster to keep her protected in the field!
The arms with the 90's looking hacker's 'think-pad' is from the new Anvil Industries cyberpunk set.
The mechadendrite is a guitarstring with a claw bit off of an old marine techpriest axe.
The head is off of one of the skitarri models I could find on bitzbox at the time (sorry cant remember which) and was indeed a cowson to fit into the collar convincingly.
I've seen people just stick them on top of the collars in similar conversions but thats just absurd on the face of it. Lazy and crude and looks physically wrong. Yeah, this is a lot of work but a much better/integral look in the end imho...
I was going for a much more subtle and somehow more realistic approach to an ad-mech advisor for the force, still a bit absurd and warhammery but a little bit more diesel-punk in over-all design.
yes, she has no side arm, but remember. thats where her servo skull comes in.
no axe? well, no. I've an idea about this, too, but will say no more till I've more than a rough concept rattling in my brain...
colours? well most likely a black or brown leather duster, red/white robes (head and arms) and metallic gubbins with black/grey laptop thingy... more soon...
cheers folks!
Well, today I got the last two bebbanburg commandos done.
Plasma Specialist.
you may remember me saying, the plasmagun is made from a primaris plas-pistol with the old metal stock off a plasmagun for that bit of logic to the design.
I wanted something compact and guard-sized but still obviously NOT a plasmapistol with a stock. the new primaris sized stuff is ideal for this purpose.
the gubbins on his belt is the spare pack from the arms-master kit (his plasma cleaning and care kit perhaps?)
the "battery-cells" are from the scout sniper sprue and I imagine these fitting inside that cylindrical bit on the gun like its a revolver chamber.
perhaps that flips out, the 'dry' cell is ditched and the new one is slapped in and it spins up to speed and to create energy or whatever...
The silencer guy.
A bast to get the rifle shouldered and it still looks a little janky if I'm honest. still I'm pleased with the hand-sculpted magazine assembly poking out from under his arm. damn you can barely see it but I know its there! LOL originally this only had the scout-rifle silencer because I'd run out of standard lasguns to steal muzzles off at the time, but damn if it didn't turn out well...
his waist is kitted out with a bolt-rifle scope, a primaris pocket, another of my 'frag-charges' (the goliath grenade dealie) and a pair of stun grenades from the enforcer set.
I ummed and ahhed on what colour to paint these so much that I just painted them straight metal in the end. I'm glad I did as there's not that much shiny metal on him so it turns out as a nice contrast to all the dark and drab.
well, thats them done then.
got two ogryns, the ksg shotgun guy and the 'rioteer' and once thats done thats it for 39th for now. (not forever though)
but fear not, I've stuff in the post from the good old U,S of A from our good buds at madrobot minis. Ordered it a bit ago and still no acknowledgement that the order is processed yet. they said it could take 3 weeks or more just to process, then theres likely a fortnight or more after that to get here.
It cost some in postage too but it was a treat to myself and I really wanted these specific head/helmet designs for a future allied regiment to the 39th that will soon be gracing these pages of this thread...
I've already said too much but all will be revealed soon...
well soon ish...
For now I'll say that it will also use parts from anvil and dkok weapons.
whats that? you want to know more?
will just have to wait I'm afraid...
I know, right.
the 39th started life out as allies for the spacesharks, they in turn were allies to the 111st royston rifles! the list will go on as long as I can be bothered to I suppose LOL
the upcoming regiment is still from the eforwich system.
A few troopers from Lady Lucy's hometown.
where the 39th pioneers hail from Eoforwich Prime, the commandos and grenadiers from the training facilities on Bebbanburg, these boys will be dropping in from Filey Secondus...
So, today I got the Tech-Priest done:
well yesterday technically, but the light was gone for a photo opportunity so she's waited till today.
Magos Corialanus Blaque.
Although not native to the Eoforwich system, Magos Blaque has found herself to be a permanant fixture in service to the 39th Pioneer Corps.
A practical sort, Corialnus is never seen in the field without her heavy leather duster to protect her robes and mechanics from the filthy rigours of trench based warfare.
Although young, she has talent well beyond her years in the adeptus, her youth only evident by the lack of the more obvious technical and mechanical 'enhancements' that members of the ad-mech usually find themself encrusted in as their term of service continues.
that aside, her absurdly tall stature suggests at some kind of manipulation beneath the robes in that regard.
Her weapon of choice is the reliable and durable ad-mech enginseer's thinkpad, an antiquated and arcane device of unimaginable power when used by the appropriately skilled hands of one of her order.
It may be true that what she doesn't know about mobile artillery and subtrerainian vehicles isn't worth knowing, but as far as combat and defences are concerned, she lets the servitors and servo-skulls do the talking.
why have a cyber-mastiff and bark yourself eh?
So as you can see I went for the dark brown on the coat in the end. I found it was a nice tie in to the commander's bomber jacket and also to the generally brown tones of the force as-far.
As this coat has nice big areas on it, I decided to stipple first then move onto edge and scratch highlighting, subtle after shading but it does add to the effect nonetheless...
I did the belt in the light leather for a bit of subtle tonal contrast and I added some detail in the form of the freehand cog banding on the hood, some weathered brass detail on the 'antithykera device' on her belt and the absurdly small freehand on the screen of the think-pad, displaying a windows98 desktop and solitaire respectively...
here's a close-up of that, prior to assembly:
The rest of the tech was kept to simple bronze and steel and the armour-plating and thinkpad done in simple black plastic finish. so as not to overwhelm the model in metals.
Nice and understated if I do say so myself. Ideal for a practical, diesel-punk themed army.
BTW, Steve at Madrobot got back to me already. processed and sent.
I figure I should expect the bits in a couple of weeks minimum from the states then...
I've still to get some bits from anvil and thats the start of the Filey Drop-Troops then...
Great model! I always thought Delaque/AdMech kitbashes looked great. The tallness of the delaque torso is easily explained in Admech, who cybernetically augment their bodies well past standard human physiology.
Lovely understated paint as anticipated, such a fitting priest of the army. Initially surprised by her bare arms but the rolled up sleeves just adds to the realistic approach - which goes double for the solitaire
So my back has decided to blowout another disc, it seems... sigh...
this happened similarly back in 2017 on my L4/L5 disc and that was a bad-un...
I also had a slight bulge on L5/S1 at the time.
I was +/- completely crippled from crotch to knee and in perpetual day/night agony for the inital 6 weeks, followed by 4 months of reduced mobility, strength and more pain (though considerably less acute, it became rather dabilitating to experiance for such a long period.).
Now I've had a resurgence of pain in the form of this new event.
I can say for sure its not L4/L5 again as that was so far prolapsed that all the internal jelly was expunged. I doubt theres much left of that one than a thin line husk of harder disc left, to be honest. due to the location of the pain I can say with almost no doubt that its L5/S1, I'm hoping, nou but a particularly bad bulge, but my heart tells me its gone much like t'other one...
this time I've less ciatic issue with the legs (those nerves are situated a little higher up) but, still, t'aint good.
took today off work and will do nothing but good old rest till monday. with luck the initial acuteness of the inflamation and pain of the trauma will have subsided enough that I will at least be able to work again... new job and all, typical gakky timing eh?
I'm not woe stricken or looking for sympathy, by any means.
Just telling you guys so you can expect a bit of a gap in the painting for now, as I've serious doubt I'll be sitting craned over the desk for some time for a while at least. (possibly the worst position to be in, LOL!)
so, here's something I did a week ago but was saving for now:
yes, its time for that homebrew sly-marbo stand-in
The rioteer.
as you can see, at Boss Salvage's suggestion, I've elected to add a frag/krag grenade combo to his belt.
This one comes from the new necromunda scummers set (or whatever they're called these days), I got this one from bitzbox t'other day when picking up some bits, just to see what the scale was like.
Its essentially a more realistic interpretation of the marine versions (with spon details etc...), both in style and size for guard sized minis. In the end I just decided to use it on this one as a one off but in truth I prefer using the tactical squad and sternguard grenades for that chunky, 2nd/3rd ed guard look that you all know I love so much.
The neophyte arms added a real sense of close combat (with the armour and pads) and the brown leather gillet marks him out clearly as a character.
These extra details on the arms also helped paintjob to translate really well to this model IMHO.
so is it really my marbo stand in? I dunno, could be marbo, could be an alternate stormtrooper Sgt. could simply be a killteam member.
I can think of a few other models I've made for this 39th project that would go together as a good killteam to be honest (the demosuit, beret guy and caped sniper come to mind...) bah, whatever he is hes a cool concept if nothing else and was real fun to model and paint. Thats the important thing...
also, at the same time I had knocked up this camo test for the armour on the upcoming filey drop-troopers:
A real subtle 'splotch' camo pattern made all the more subtle by using the first highlight layer colour as the pattern colour. then highlighting and scratching as usual.
the only difference on this is that I've also decided to use zandri dust as a final dot highlight too. just for that extra 'sparkle'...
also, please ignore the piss-poor job of the face. was only painted as an afterthought to 'finish' the head. just looked odd left unpainted. I know I could have just painted one of the spare helmets from the sprue but I didn't have one of those.
also bear in mind that I will not be using cadian heads, but something close enough that this is an ideal 'figure' for testing the scheme on.
most will not even have faces showing anyhow so, yeah not a problem...
That harsh feeling when you read about a "piss-poor" paintjob on a face that looks better than anything you ever managed yourself *sigh*. But... well, I have fun painting, so I'm happy for you.
Looks great, as usual. The Sly Marbo Dude definitly looks like he can stand his ground in a fight!
erm.. yeah sorry I guess. I'll clarify by saying that what I was getting at was his sloppy highlighting (only two layers compared to my usual six minimum on skin) and the very wonky eyes. its very far from my usual is what I meant.
I just basecoat in ratskin flesh. then go over with cadian fleshtone.
cadian fleshtone mixed with skavenblight dinge for stubble, then clean up with cadian fleshtone.
then you keep adding white ink into cadian fleshtone to highlight up.
oh yeah, I forget.
I also use bugmans glow in a similar fasion under the eyes and on the bottom lip.
then its washed to shade and cleaned up with more white-ink/cadian fleshtone and then extra spot shading done to taste. then eyes.
done...
sounds like a lot but its actually pretty straight forward in actual practice. the constant adding of white ink to lighten and doing smaller and smaller highlights per layer is the key...
as for the camo? it's going on the shoulder, knee, helmet and torso armour plates.
the carry vest and rig will be done in simple olive green and the jump-suit in simple beige without camo. just a bit of a mix up on the theme of the 39th so that its different yet still sits with them well.
that, and I guess I'm getting fed up with pea-dot now LOL
Rioteer looks very much the business, glad I could help with the gear I missed some of the details before paint, like the fur lining on the jacket. Great kitbash.
So. my back is fine.
in fact it was fine after the same weekend it went out.
I studiously did all the excercises and rested heavily and was back to work as usual on monday.
so far so good.
so painted stuff? erm, no not at present.
but meet the filey 42nd droptroops!
An off-shoot paratroop regiment from the Eoforwich system thats inspired by elysian guard and the U.S 101st airbourne...
here's a full squad-shot of the infantry squad I have so far:
as you can see I am the madman that bought the dkok plastics, just to use the arms and pockets...
well, why not, everyone else is going to be using the bodies, I wanted something different.
Don't get me wrong, its a fantastic kit. but I warn anyone getting it or more specifically bits from it, get the god-damned instructions!
Its a real clusterfeth as far as sprue-layout and shared bits are concerned.
The other thing is that, in truth, the arms are very specific for the bodies they are designed for.
Meaning that simply slapping them onto some cadians (or anvil stuff, as I have here) is not as straight forward as you might imagine.
Lots of trimming, repositioning and greesstuffing required to get the poses all good and natural. consider yourselves pre-warned...
as aforementioned, the heads are from madrobot minis over in the states.
The Jim Cameron's Aliens inspired, "CDF trooper" heads.
yes they are colonial marines helmets. but just look at the masks and goggles combo going on there!
the mask is an obvious homage to the cadian/elysian rebreathers, the helmet itself very U.S military, but features all the extra raised panelling and camera details that are reminiscent of the kasrkin cadian helmets, without going too chunky or loosing the generic paratroop look.
and the goggles scream pure steel legion!
what a potent mix, eh?
I feel the heads mostly look like the lovechild of the elysians and steel legion. mostly...
I went to Anvil industries for the bodies/legs (who else?).
I picked the light armour torso for the nice plates on the chest and back mixed with the molee vest detail that makes them fit in real nicely with the bebbanburg commandos but retain the up-armoured look that the dkok arms give...
the next obvious choice was the fatigue legs. more molee detail and the essential kneepads, plus they do not have the overhanging 'jacket' detail, making the fatigues look more akin to the elysian all-in-one jumpsuit. which is just what I wanted...
I trimmed a few of the rifles down to create a carbine version of the lucius pattern lasgun. Ideal for droptroops. Some I left full length.
why? well the 'slung' rifles made altering the barrel length a bit of a cowson to alter without considerable work and I found I rather liked the mixed bag of weapon length. much like how the 101'st used both m1 rifle and m1 carbine in mixed units...
I left it about half and half in the squad for as equal distribtion as possible, given the limitations of the kit.
Their kit is mostly the packs from the dkok (I felt they looked a bit parachutey but are clearly just kit-bags) but ditched the respirator tubes, one, to distance it from the dkok a bit and two, to make it seem a little lighter.
I went for primaris marine pockets (assault sprue and heavy int's) for that "new pocket" detail that I love and used the tactical and sternguard krack/frag grenade combo bits to give each guy one of each where possible. Also I made sure that each guy also has a waterbottle (cadian).
This was obviously not a feature on the 39th, who are mostly an entrenched unit, with bunkers and supplies aplenty, these guys are droptroops, they need to take all they need with them!
I've also used some of the deathwatch/scout chest pockets for an extra detail hither and yon and also to hide the odd bad join
This use of the same amount and style of standard kit on each model, again, where possible (rifle, pack, grenade, pocket, waterbottle.) gave the squad the feeling of one of the gw releases of the 2nd and 3rd edition era the chunky astartes nades and cadian waterbottles in particular were designs visibly shared across the board on many of the guard units of yesteryear: 2nd ed cadians, catachans, modians, valhallans and tallarns all used these...
disperate kit is something thats better suited to veteran units, where standardisation is lost for induviduality. I feel I lost a bit of this 'standardisation' on the 39th infantry, mixing the grenade/kit styles up a bit too much. fine on the stormtroopers, commandos and veterans but its a bit sloppy on file infantry in truth and this time round (with these droptroops) I endeavour not to do that...
The grenade launcher was the obvious choice. its all I ever put in infantry squads these days, great all rounder and it helps that the breachloaders look rather cool too I decided on a strict 'no-heavies' policy in the squads too, these would be fielded exclusively as sperate units or simply cover that with the 39ths entrenched artillery of mortars and heavybolters. who wants to drop out of an aricraft with a heavy bolter or whatever anyhow? no, makes MUCH more sense to use drop canisters and stick to six-man units to recover them or, as I say, leave that side of warfare to the 39th!
I ummed and ahhed on the bolter on the sgt. I think it looks so bad on the dkok model but then, when dry-fitting onto the sgt during construction I fell in love with the look. the simple addition of the 'stock' from the second edition bolter, mk3 marine boltgun-mag pocket and dw chestrig shells made the thing look ideal. if the rifles and carbines are m1's respectively, this bolter is the thompson! to make it obvious he is in charge, I put the skull on the lid (shaved from an old bolter) to match the squad designations of the 39th and as an extra detail I sculpted some simple scarf neckerchiefs to both him and the squad's corporal, the second in command who takes half the squad should it decide to split into two fireteams...
a simple yet fun detail that helps mark these guys out and references the more veteran status of them, the neckerchiefs are cut fom chutes from previous jumps, you see.
Twas indeed tricky to get some of the poses going naturally (arse-scratch/pocketgrab reloading dude for example) without them being verbatim copies of the stuff in the dkok kit but thats where a bit of ingenuity and creativity comes in. thats the real fun part. using stuff in ways its not intended to be to make something new but not obviusly converted is the crux of a good kit-bash. it should look like it's supposed to look that way. not fudged to... I'm first to admit it doesn't always work though... that gl guy looks a bit spack from some angles... bah, nevermind eh?
so why aren't these guys painted in any capacity yet?
well I'm not done yet. thats where I need your help guys!
I desperately need knives for the guys.
I want them on the lower legs ideally, down the side, joined where the kneepad is.
I'll say now, the cadian ones are far too large, as are the catachan. I ideally want a dagger type, shaped like the stormtrooper ones a bit but they are both far too large and overly ornate on the scabbards... sigh
marine knives are just as absurdly huge and oftimes without scabbards.
I thought anvil would have something. they do have some kabar type knives available but their sprue only has two in the scabbards and they are, again rather huge...
there were some forgeworld ones available which would have been ideal
In fact I used some as bootkniveson my steel legion I did years ago.
they were either elysian or cadian upgrade (or both) but I'm snookered if I can find some anywhere these days...
anyone got any? open to sell? let me know!
I'm also open to suggestions to what to use. third party or whatever. I eagerly await your suggestions guys!
dont be shy, let me know what you think I could use...
well thats out of the picture for me.
I've no access to such technologies and my experiance with shapeways has prejudiced me against 3rd party printing sites indefinately. (see my bfg thread for full rant...)
I'm not wasting money on an unstable and unrealisticly expensive medium.
I just wondered if you guys know of anything from another game system that might work.
although I know of the systems, I'm not hot on all the faction names/bits...
yup, its one of these:
trimmed and shaved into the dagger shape/size, with the grip off of one of these cut down and grafted to it:
yup thats kinda expensive but I did get a bunch of the scabbards in a batch and I have many of the old second edition marine knives:
I can always nick the grips from these so no biggie there!
So, here's the Filey drop-troop grenadiers!
as you can see I've used Anvil's balistic heads, heavy torsos and drop-troop legs.
the look I was going for was a general improvement of the 3rd edition stormtrooper minis.
the visors, armour, holsters, backpacks and plethora of pockets and grenades all help to enforce this image.
I had a bugger of a time making the rifles into hellguns (moreso using only the rifles I had left-over from the dkok kit after modelling the other squad) adding boltrifle scopes and fusing the stormtrooper hotshot-las barrels on (that was a particular cowson)
It's also why I went for a grenade launcher in the squad too, meaning I only had to make three of the hellguns!
The grenadelauncher itself comes from the atalan jackals and was a 'proof-of-concept' of how to make a gl on the dkok arms that was different to the reloading one in the kit. In fact I've used the medic backpack and hand to use the vials as grenades in this context.
The triplet of nades from the atalan jackals on the chest rounds out the look...
With the backpacks, I decided to keep the 'gasmask canisters' on there to seperate the minis from the rank and file droptroopers a little more. Them being chunkier and all that.
however, I only had two backpacks from the dkok kit left! argh!
As I say, I did use the medic one on the gl guy and then remade the other remaining two needed based on primaris eradicator pockets with flanking smaller pockets from the infiltrator leg pockets to mimic the dkok backpack, albeit without the bedroll. yup, thattledo!
again with the waterbottles and marine 'nades but also now using primaris holsters, as the big holstered pistols on the 3rd ed stormtroopers were a prominent feature I wanted to replicate, allbeit, with nicer detail (the 3rd ed holsters were much cruder than the new primaris ones)
well, I was going to do that splotch on the armour but instead i've decided the usual waaagh flesh green is going on the shoulder, knee, helmet and torso armour plates.
the carry vest and rig will be done in the simple olive green and the jump-suit in simple beige without camo. just a bit of a mix up on the theme of the 39th so that its different yet still sits with them well.
kinda like how the base elysian colourscheme is much like the cadian 8th one.
they are very detailed minis and lack the large open space that greatcoats afford, making camo areas both smaller to render and could create a cluttery look.
that, and I guess I'm getting fed up with pea-dot now. ;D
that being said I intend to do a simple camo akin to the us marines duckhunter (though probably much more simplified) on a very pale green base, just on the bedrolls and scarves...
Love how your guard look, very cool. Congratulations on your admech / delaque from last month. I think your kitbash landed much better than my own, well done!
Thanks man.Theres a lot of delaque conversions out there. Makes it a bit of a bugger to make something unique. pleased to hear that I might have achieved that!
also, as a general notice, please be adviced that I've just updated the images of the File droptroop. bit better now...
A formidably good harnessing of bits and converting, sir. I love Anvil, and one day I’ll probably grab a bunch of Mad Robot too as I like the look of his stuff too.
The painted result is on point - subtly linking to their trencher brethren but hi tech and sleek enough to really leave a presence.
I am very close to finally presenting your gift of reinforcements by the way…
as for madrobot. do get stuff its tip-top quality. but I will say now, order enough to make it worth your while. shipping can be a cow-son...
also, looking forward to more of your guard!
not much love for guard these days, but probably because they play like shyte these days... :(
roll on the new codex, eh?
Something a little different today:
Rogue Trader Mariella Danbury.
Ace gunslinger, excellent swords-woman, interstellar master-trader and all round fashion guru, this rogue trader is not to be trifled with.
Its unknown as to whether her commissar hat is earned or simply a bold fasion statement, but one things for sure, she sure does wear it well...
ok, this was a present from my wife from last xmas and yes I only just got round to painting it now...
its a excersise in proving to you that I am actually capable of painting anything other than grey, green or brown
So, no, your eyes haven't gone, that's really an ermine and felt lined purple leather jacket with jeans and tan boots she's sporting.
why? well why the hell not.
In truth I wanted to convey the flamboyance and general dont-give-a-funt ness of a Roguetrader and felt that lavish displays of wealth and power were the best way to achive the look, hence golden and royal colours being used and it also explains the pilfered commissar hat and sash.
I chose a necromunda base to suggest that shes onboard a starship of some kind, either thieving her way through a hulk or comandeering the bridge of a poor unfortunate merchant vessel... what a scallywag, eh?
the model is of course from anvil, who else?
perhaps a crew of low-down thieving bastards and neer-do-wells may yet join her in the not so distant future...
as for madrobot. do get stuff its tip-top quality. but I will say now, order enough to make it worth your while. shipping can be a cow-son...
also, looking forward to more of your guard!
not much love for guard these days, but probably because they play like shyte these days... :(
roll on the new codex, eh?
I haven’t played 40K for decades so I’m good on that front - if I ever attempt it I’d maybe try Grim Dark Future for simplicity.
Rogue Trader paint job looks awesome!! Loving the ermine and jeans results, she’s certainly looking like she should have a camera crew and adoring viewing public
Ragsta wrote: ...
I haven’t played 40K for decades so I’m good on that front - if I ever attempt it I’d maybe try Grim Dark Future for simplicity...
LOL last time i picked up dice was in 1998! that'd be third edition I suppose...
I still buy the guard codecies when they come out so that I can build the squads/army properly.
but no, I don't play anymore either. Still collect though. because painting cool minis is my jam...
and yeah, you're right about MD, she is definately a diva! lol
just an fyi, as I've done the droptroops using the dkok bits and it seems evryone-and-his-mum is making dkok based models I've decided to sell off the remaining bodies and heads from my dkok kit:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/799591.page
I considered several different things I could do with them but int he end, I think I'd rater get some more stuff from anvil instead! LOL I thrive on doing different stuff to whats trending and as such have lost interest for them now.
not just dkok. Trenchcoats as a whole. perhaps its all that pea-dot I've been painting or perhaps its the relevent ease of the speed I can do a droptrooper compared to a 39-er. It might even be the lure of other colours that the deviation of the rogue trader has bought. anyway. for now I'm done with them and figure that someone might be interested. If not I guess I'll return to them in the future?
time for a load of bunk!
Clearly based on the forgeworldpill-box design, this started lifeout as a cut-off bit of HD foam pilfered from a skip-dive on the way home from work.
I carved the entire thing from a solid lump, including the void on the inside. that was a bit tricky.
As with the jersey barrier thing I did before, I used some easyfill45 mixed into some cuprinol garden-shades (black but any colour would do) and gave it two neat coats in high sun to dry quickly.
This gave the lovely cement texture but retained the 'sharpness' of the polystyrene's edges, keeping it looking like a cast peice. It also doubled as a good undercoat.
I basecoated it admin-grey and then added zandridust to the mix and stippled it all over with a fat old drybrush. I added ever more lighter tones to this and continued to sponge it on, concentrating more and more on the edges with each successive highlight.
once dry I gently smunged on some castellan green hither and yon as mouldy-mossy algeish growth.
next I watered down some of my agrax/nuln mix (the one I always use) so it was very thin and stained the whole thing evenly.
once dry I smunged some rhinox hide around the bottom edge as mud/dampness and used neat nuln oil and agrax for water/filth runs over the surfaces.
The door was made from cardboard (pack of a writing pad stuff) with bits of a leman-russ engine hatch cut up and stuck on it. I also added extra studs with cut down bits of spear-shaft and some were done with pva dots.
it was then treated with an all-over coat of pva, then agrellan earth (any of those crackly ones will do).
The rusty steel things on the top (I imagine those as how its carried in and dropped in place via a valk or vulture) were made from two bits of the round sprue from the tamiya barrels kit mounted on valkerye heavy bolter rigs.
these (and the door) were then treated to some typhus corrosion prior to painting.
painting on the metalwork was done the same as my rusty barrels: a base of gal vorbak red followed by the same mixed with some mornfang brown sponged over. then sponge over some rhinox hide and some wash with virmin fur (scrag brown in todays money?) wash and then a bit of an orange sponging then a scuff with some dark metal.
the skull on the front comes form an old bud of mine. Its a forgeworld resin detail thing I've had for over 15years now and never found use of till now. Handy though as its a nice reference tot he fw model this is replicating.
I did it bronze (tin bitz) so I could use that as an excuse to do some verdigris as another colour on there...
Then, to finish, a bit of birdshit on the top, lots of rust streaks around the metals, some static grass and some leaves here and there and suddenly its done...
heres a view of the top to better show off the details there:
now, the interior is painted but getting shots is impossible due to the way the thing's built. its not fancy, just another door to pretend to be the inside of the other one (just plain card and crackle though, no real details) and the walls are slightly greyer and its all painted rather dark to extenuate the shadowy nature of it. not that it will ever be seen. but I know its there! lol
oh, and just for S&G's here's a shot with a trooper, heavy weapon in place, a couple of barrels and that jersey barrier thing I made before...
It matched up with the barrier quite nicely considering they were painted quite a time between each other...
Seems I'm not quite done with terrain yet, I've also made these dragons teeth tank traps yesterday evening:
I used all the same methods as the bunker and to visually tie them in, I've opted to include metal hook-eyes too. (as seen on similar ones on what was the GHQ Line near Waverley abbey, Surrey. they are still there afaik!)
as with the pill-box the teeth are based on insulation foam.
If you know not what the reinforcing/hooks are made of, I shall think you a simpleton
These hooks are intended to be designed as if theres a bottom plate with the big u-bolt (like an exhaust manifold clip) that's then surrounded by a hastily erected plywood shuttering, then poured with concrete, the top of the u-bolt protruding from the top of the finished casting.
A hole is dug, the tooth planted, and the earth placed on top of the lower half...
Thus accounting for the slight mismatched size/shape of them thats actually the result of me being a slap-dash cowson who cut them all freehand in all the over-eager haste of typical 40k modeller on a scratch-build project.
come on, what do you expect?
Just look at the pill-box, or anything else I've modelled for that fact. If its not pissed, leaning or generally wonky its probably not mine...
At first I thought they might be kinda big for 28mm, the biggest of typical dragons teeth from the Siegfried Line or atlantic wall fortifications clocking in at about 3 to 4 foot tall at the max. as they are up to just past the guardsman's waist/elbow line thats +/- 4' so thats ok then.
regardless, 40k does have some damn huge tanks to consider anyway so perhaps the bigger the better anyway, eh..?
I left them single so they can be used in all manner of engagement scenarios, road-block, trenchline etc.. and as with the barricade, I screwed a half-inch screw in the bottom of each to give them the weeble effect that prevents them from flying across the battlefield should somewhone happen to pass them and gently cough or blink too hard...
It really does help and made painting much easier too...
Thanks guys, Anvil really did a class-A job on him, so I figured ol' Cap needed a decent paintjob.
as for the Ogres, again, the sculpts are outstanding. not only that, but a breeze to convert; the one in the middle was altered quite a bit to get that pose, but with relative ease tbh...
"Flight Lt Jasmine "Jazzy" Mitchell has flown more classifications of Imperial vessels than you've had hot dinners.
If they could get a washing machine to fly, Our Jazzy could land it..." Captain Roger Stevens, Filey 42nd company commander at the Commissarial compentence review, following the incident on Rurer
So, as you can see I've another character done.
and yes! its not just beige brown and green again!
yup, after the outright fun of the eye watering Mariella Danbury colurscheme followed by the patriotic red/white/blue fervour of Cpt Roger Stevens scheme I've finally found my love for colour!
(damn, still got 15 drab guys to get done yet...)
this time I went for orange; as an obvious reference to the StarWars X-wing jumpsuits.
Its worked a treat and was the perfect way to sell a pilot model with a bit of life to it!
the model is (of course) Anvil and comes from the drop-trooper range, making her the ideal mini to fit in with the Filey 42nd.
The pose is just great, the wind in her hair and all that, purest 80's cheese, I love it!
That is a great model, and the pose on top of the bird is just absolutely amazing. Your paint job also really did it justice. Great job on her face especially, she has this great look of uncaring superiority on her face! "Yeah, I know I'm good, who are you and why are you bothering me?"
A new job for me starts tomorrow so it looks as though I may have less time to paint inthe coming weeks.
however I got these done today:
Florin sump-rats Like their necromundan cousins, the sump rats of Florin are indeed rodents of unusual size.
however, their domesticated nature means that thier genetic stock is much more stable than other wild sump-rats, not being exposed to hazardous waste or radioactive reactors.
On Florin they are mostly bred as pets for the wealthy and are considered status symbols amongst the arisocracy, easily trained to perform tricks...
However, never ones to pass up an advantage on the battlefield, the regiments of the Eoforwich system have trained these rodents to be extremely capable and accurate mine and other IED dectectors. thier small, light bodies allowing them to enter minefields and unstable structures without fear of detonating pressure sensitve devices.
These pair have been kitted out with explosive vests and trained to find the weak spots in enemy veicles and fortifications, whereupon they schluff off the vests and return to their handeler, the explosives detonated at a safe distance.
sneaky and underhanded, yes, but absolutely effective...
yup, Anvil again. blinding models. really full of character the other two are up for grabs if any of you folks are interested (the one with the artillery shell and jerry can)
the bases are 20mm and come from another game system (clue I believe)
the eyes on the one without goggles look better in the flesh. it's black gloss so it looks odd in the pics what with the light and all that but its fine on the real-deal... just have to trust me on that...
Cheers, I'm rather pleased with how she looks on the interceptor. the shot with both does wonders for both mini's!
yup so far the job is binding!
I'm working as an electro-mechanical engineer for a small firm that specialises in repairing components for german designed printing machines; servos, motors, swingarms, rotors, pulleys, mechanical rollers, etc... chances are, if you've ever read a magazine, some of our components are in the machines that printed it...
full training on site, good wage, five days a week flexible start/finish time, no row from machines all day, nice quiet workshop with a decent rock radio station on all day and friendly conversation while I work.
As much as I disliked the last place, I have to admit that its led to this so I get why ithad to happen this way... rather relieved tbh. I can really get stuck into this one and my eagerness to learn new things and my natural innovations that I have in mind actually seem to be appreciated as opposed to scorned as they were at the last place... god that was odd... anyway, fingers crossed all will stay groovy... to paraphrase nebula;
...All I have to do is not fall out ;D
Those anvil ogryns look great and i always really liked the idea of their the giant lewis guns. That is something that could really lay down some hurt. All round a really cool army, they really look like they belong in the siege lines! Really nice work on pilot as well, that shot of her on the interceptor might be 100% 80s cheese, but IMHO 80s cheese is the best cheese.
Also congrats on the job. Hope its going well and you're still enjoying it.
well, ok, that was technically last sunday but what can I say?, I've been busy.
well what would you have it, my Mrs. sneakily decided to pop over to victoria miniatures and get me couple of treats:
Lt. Bryce, tank commander:
I've been after this mini for a few years now...
vikky's sculpt on this is a really detailed mini. its funny but it has a real different feel when painting it to anvil's stuff.
don't get me wrong, its detailed as hell, and fits in seamlessly with the other minis in my collection thus far, but it has a certain hand sculpted almost best-part-of-third-edition's slightly exaggerated almost cartoonesque feel that not only helps get character across but is also just right up my nostalgia alley!
The model makes me think of Jennit Sulla from the Ciaphas Cain novel series.
Its just as I imagine her looking, sticking out of her command Chimera hatch!
she's to go on an upcoming vehilcle for the 39th, alonside these:
which will also be on it, but more on that later...
Now, there's also another mini from vikky but he's awaiting some finishing converting touches and a paint-job and I don't want to spoil the surprise!
you'll just have to wait and see on him...
anyway finishing her off got me in the mood for more third edition styled shenaningans so I've also painted this guy I picked up on-the-cheap from ebay too:
meet private Jackson of the Filey droptroops...
This is the third one of this last-chancer model I've painted over the years and although I'd not say its my favourite ever third edition guardsman, its definately the best guardsman sniper model GW has ever done IMHO.
Its just such a great fit for any army and no matter what coloursceme or skill-level I paint it in, I'm always satisfied by the end result...
this time I painted the leaves on his scrim in a mix of not only green but also some dead colours too to match the oak litter on all my bases...
I just love how the massively oversized rifle looks as though its easily capable of taking out an astartes from, like, half a mile away in a single shot!
I may yet convert some others to go with this one (3 spotters and 2 more snipers to make a six man team), most likey from anvil minis but with gs scrim/netting and converted 3rd edition style sniperrifles and the ammo-on-the-fatiges details to match. but we'll just have to wait and see on that. I've a LOT to get done first before that would even happen...
well, its definately visually based off one of those.
Its actually made from a valkyrie heavy bolter with the topsights and the cylindrical bit above the barrel removed then replaced with an inverted support-rung/muzzle of an astartes assaultcannon.
the rear stock and pistolgrip is off a kantrael lasgun.
As my droptroops and bebbanburg commandos are inspired by the elysians somewhat, I decided to make some similarly designed weapons, thus the bullpup lascarbines onthe commandos and this compact, more portable heavybolter...
Inspired by the model of the rogue trader Mariella Danbury I did a while back, My wife has written up a short story based on Lady Danbury's adventures and set it in an appropriately grim and dark future sci fi world, which may or may not have similarites to other sci-fi worlds living or dead...
Its not without it's humor though as you'll no doubt notice from the title alone!
Its also a loveletter to all other good sci fi we all know and love from the 80's and 90's, so do go check it out here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fs5jybhe5u44i07/Lady%20Mariella%20Danbury.pdf?dl=0
So, yeah its been a while I know, but between work and weather I've been busy as hell...
anyway, had a few moments this afternoon so took the time to do the final bebbanburg commando:
as you can see this is the one with the ksg shotgun. I did it with what would be a faux-wood stock, kinda akin to this paintjob done on this real-world ksg:
the shells on the back come from the deathwatch sprue and the torso is a fatigue one rather than a greatcoat one. simply because thats all I had left at the time, LOL!
as I used one of the not-gasmask heads I elected to add the mask to the waist, this time alongside an enforcer's grenade, for a bit of speciality.
I wanted this guy to look like a veteran after-all...
this marks the last of the 39th as far as I'm concerned...
so don't look here for more minis in peadot camo any more :(
but the 42nd are still going strong! I will get on with those guys soon as I can, folks, so its not the end of the thread by any means.
also got vehicles etc to do too, so yeah, just the 39th I'm done with for now...
bit of a relief to not have to paint any more bloody peadot camo! LOL
another character for the filey 42nd today,
Sergeant Barney 'Plucky' Jameson.
Lifelong friends with Captain Stevens since childhood, back on Filey Secondus and now his 1st sgt, Plucky is with Cap to the end of the line...
yup, its Vikky Lamb's colonel Ash 'Ironside' mini.
I swapped out the right arm for an anvil-industries one with the addition of a shotgun from the atalan jackals set, simply because it was better quality casting than on the one that came with the kit...
here he is alongside his old bud, Cap;
only took a couple of hours. came out rather well tbh...
Nice work on the sergeant and the shotgun Bebbanburger. Although i think a genuine timber KSG would be much much nicer. Victoria's characters are always a treat when painted up well and her sculpting of faces is excellent. I think the 2 characters look great together. I can see perhaps a squad of characterful veterans coming together. Fireteam Stevens.
in truth I've not really planned on more than 'cap' and 'plucky' as command figures for the FDT.
but I won't say it'll never happen...
today I've got the first of my Filey Droptroop Stormtroopers done:
Sgt. Hayes
A no-nonsense sort, Hayes believes that there's no problem in the galaxy he can't fix with a can-do attitude and a set of brass knuckles...
as you can see, he's packed with detail, referencing not only the kasrkin and original 3rd ed stormtroopers but also the regular filey droptroops I've done before.
the straps on his augmented drop-boots were a particular cowson to highlight! LOL agin, the brass knuckes were taken from a bloodbowl mini...
here he is alonside the regular trooper.
the augmented boots give a chunky, up-armoured look yet obviously sell the idea of a more specialist droptrooper.
The helmet is similar enough in design to be kin, yet, with the blastshield, a great visual tie-in to the 3rd ed st's.
The mass of kit is also very stormtrooper.
the chunkier armour and that also helps.
What I mean is if the regular filey trooper is cadian, then this is the kasrkin to his cadian...
thanks guys, Damn, its been hard to get too enthused on this project recently...
anyway, heres another guardsmen:
A droptroop Corporal.
You can see that I, again, made up another backpack on this one, like on the stormtrooper sgt.
In place of the chute/bedroll I went for the pouch/cup combo accessory and then added a gs scarf so as to put the camo pattern on him that way...
he also uses the entrenching tool as opposed to a bootknife, just to add a little more character to him.
in games terms, he's just another guardsmen, but I like the idea of having corporals as well as sgt's so that the squad can split into two fireteams as wanted. Just a bit of flavour for the droptroops that differs them from the 39th.
of course, I had to do the tin-cup in white/blue enamel...
thanks guys, though something important I must stress.
Cups of Tea are no laughing matter...
the entire british empire was built on them.
and if you think I'd let my filey boys go to war without one you'd be very much mistaken, mate!
Great work on the corporal, his pose is really natural, camo scarf was a nice touch and again the cup, easily accessible so you're not wasting precious time when the opportunity to get a brew on presents itself.
Yes, you've seen it all before, but I just needed some better quality shots of some bits for something I'm doing and I thought I'd share them here too!
so, as if you didnt know, warhammer day has been again and we have this to show for it:
Spoiler:
now what can I say?
well, at first I wasn't sure about them. then I kinda liked them, then I realised just how much my filey droptroops look just like these...
I don't know who the designer is but they are really taking the gw line down a different visual path. its intersting I'll say that.
but there are concerns, here at the OSJC bunker...
many of the components look to be pre-molded. the gubbins and kit on the waist for one and the waist join on many looks to be a one-peice jobby.
the classic designs of the waterbottles have been ditched for a much smaller and, in truth, sensibly designed alternative, but, as I've mentioned before it was a point of identity in the IG design cues, one that I'll be sad to see go tbh. but yeah, thats just me being a nostalgia freak.
grenades and pockets, backpacks and webbing are also updated but in truth, excellent, and distributed in a manner I would choose to do anyway.
the new gaiters and armour is much more sensibly proportioned and the helmets much MUCH less goofy. more generic ww2 gi or even nam era than the starshiptrooper style 2002 cadian. in fact they have slightly recaptured the 'aliens' colonial marine stylings of the old metal cadians some with these lids...
the sleeker shoulder pads are good and look akin to the new dkok ones if I'm honest. however the knee pads look absurd.
I know they're supposed to be sewn-in to the fabric but they just look like a cheap conversion where someone has forgotton to sculpt the straps...
the lasguns are ok and a great improvement over the chunky-assed kantrael ones they currently have. note that they, like myself have chosen to do both fullstock and carbine versions mixed in the squads, which does create a good bit of visual diversity in there.
the real issue on these is going to be scale... gw is all over the place with scale these days. all I can say is that as these are confirmed to be 25mm bases on the baseline troops and 28.5mm on the command squad these do look tall... not primaris tall but tall nonetheless...
hopefully not too tall but I guess we'll need to see side-by-sides before we can make that call eh?
as you all know by now there's kasrkin and heavy weapons to gawp at too, but all I've said about these above minis covers them too. I can say now that I rather dislike the new kasrkin (can't put my finger on why, just too sleek and not enough chunk I think) and the heavy-heavy weapons have potential (the crew and gear anyhow) but its a shame there's no heavy mortar...
yep, tripping on a gold brick and complaining again...
That is a bit weird, didn't they just revamp the cadian box?
I do like the new helmets. Doing the highly technical test of closing one's eye and holding an old cadian up between oneself and the figure and screen and one's own open eyeball and lining the 25mm base up till it just fully obscures the one on screen(assuming these guys are on 25mm bases) it seems they maybe the height as the old cadians. I really hope my test is correct.
very technical! LOL its a fair point, and I can confirm that the word from GW is that these are on 25mm bases. just the command squad on 28.5mm
as for the revamp? yeah I gotta say that i think we are getting this way WAY earlier than intended.
the initial photo-leak was definately not planned in my opinion, but its forced gw's hand and theyve had to change the schedule around somewhat...
I think folks would be surprised at just how big the gulf of time is between design, implementation and then sales of said designs.
tis my reckoning that the head-sprue add-on in the cadian box was a 'do-for' us, for at the very least, the next year or so, while they worked on the new releases.
but as I say, their hand has been forced...
OR?
not...
just my surmising afterall... I don't work for gw so what do I really know...
I still think it will be well into next year till we get it somehow. unless I've missed some info on the 'when' of it all... don't know if anyone can elaborate on that?
for now, I'm just wondering what anvil's brodie heads would look like on one of these new cadians...
hmm...
Looks pretty legit. Although I'd suspect the anvil head would look a little bit chunkier.
But then again i have been surprised by their results in the past. For instance they graft well enough to the slightly less robust Vic miniatures well enough.
So. yes its been ages. but yes I am still here.
However, a month ago my Dad nearly wasn't.
I shant bore you with the details but he's still convalessing back home but it means all my free time away from work is taken up making sure he and my Mum are ok.
hence no models from me for an age now.
so. I got hold of the cadian shocktroop sprue...
sigh...
should have listened to my gut instinct before...
the dreaded scale issue is exactly as I feared. they tower over my filey and eoforwich guard by a good head and a half.
seriously GW, why truescale the marines with primaris and then make everything else bigger too?
I only bought these as I was assured that they are the same scale as the orignals too, ARGH! its annoying...
I shall try to keep the rant to a minimum but I will say this too; take a good, hard, long-old look at the models on the box. because thats what you're building. I honestly think its designed specifically to make conversion very very tireslomely difficult.
headswaps aside.
thats one thing that will be easy and espescially with the anvil stuff as the heads and sockets share the ball/socket joint design...
I cant help but wonder if this is part of a gw plan to release resin upgrade headswaps like the HH marines kits or if its just so you can use the multitude of heads across the new cadian range on essentially any cadian mini.
the gear/nades etc... is indeed all modelled on as the sprue pics showed and the scale of the gubbins (bottles, pockets etc...) versus the minis is more akin to boltaction mini's truescale than gw's somewhat comicly scaled stuff of old.
some might be pleased with this but, again, I find myself dissapointed to see the character of imperial guard being lost, I'll admit its cartoonesque but its how evrything in 40k has been for years.
even the new DKOK didnt stray from this too far.
its essentially resulted in a bunch of models that are somewhat at odds with a lot of the other human-scaled minis in the 40k range.
seriously, go put a gs-cult guy next to the new cadians. He's very short, no..?
the kasrkins are even worse, being more like the palanite enforcer scale but thats another issue entirely and one I've more than bored you all with before now.
I used one thing from it. thats all:
The grenade launcher was just the thing to improve the one I had in my squad (formerly using the dkok one) I found I rather liked the chunkier look and decided to also add the old "spare drum" pocket from the old cadian sprue but only had an old painted one. worry ye not it'll look fine painted. (FYI this no longer exists on the the new sprue so go get them wile you can before the old sprue is likely gone forever... unless they keep them for generic/non cadian who knows?)
the backpack is from the atalan jackals and is just an excuse for a chunky backpack to match the overall big-ol-lump this model has become. It makes him stand out more from the rank and file, which is nice as the dkok breach loader he had before was a little too subtle for my liking...
Look, you know I'm an experianced modeller and in truth, I could make it work. but why would I bother spending all that money and time gs-ing the the livng daylights out of bad joins and repairing cut-off sections when I could simply buy stuff from anvil that's already the right design, more importantly the right scale and, of course its 100% poseable already, then just add the kit and nades and pockets where I want it anyway...
aside from raiding GW sprues for specific 40k bits (like the dkok lasguns/backpacks marine pockets/grenades) I'm thinking it's anvil or bust for me where guard are concerned now...
oh yeah, talking of anvil theres this too to show:
a wip character for the FDT...
for those interested, I think I shall be selling the remains of the sprue (minus its nade-launcher obviously). I know I could use more from it but I'm so dissapointed and ashamed to think I bought into the hype that everytime I peruse it to come up with something I just put the sprue away again five minutes later.
I'll wait till I get paint on stuff again before showing more methinks...
thanks again for all the support folks!
as if you all didnt know already, its been cold.
damnably cold. too bloody cold.
but you know what Sister Haines says - "...cold is the Emperor's way of telling us to burn more heretics!"
A member of the order of the wedgewood chalice, Sister Olivia Haines is spiritual advisor to the troops in the Eoforwich system.
Ensuring that all will hear her rousing fervour, she is armed with an arcane comlink system, complete with backing tracks with such hits as "death to the deviant" and "righteous duty is its own reward" in order to give her speech the garandeur she believes it deserves.
when words fail, her lasgun "his blade" is sure to add spice to the sentiment...
yes. its the Anvil industy "evangelist" mini.
All I did was swap out the lasgun barrel for a dkok one and the rest is 'out the box'.
An exercise in painting something bright, I wanted to touch on the wedgewood blue as on my SoB Kar Dunaish ships I did for BFG, but decided I could not find the EXACT colour I wanted in the citadel range, so I simply went and bought some acylic wedgewood blue paint from hobbycraft.
I first started with a codex grey (dawnstone in todays money?) base on the white/blue bits over my usual black spray undercoat.
the wedgwood blue was shaded by adding adeptus-battlegrey to it and highlighted by adding successive white ink
the rest of her kit is my usual wood, leather, steel and brass as on the other Eoforwich/Filey troops.
I toyed around doing the armour the same green as on my troopers but in the end felt that a blue was the best compliment. its the same blue as on Cap's helm so thats a good enough tie-in for me...
Sorry to hear the nuCadians are scalecreeped too far to be of use to you. The new MKVI tac kit invalidated the vast majority of my own beakie models & bits so I know how you feel.. For me, it forced me to abandon all of my previous infantry models, but considering how much conversion and kitbashing work you do to your models, I can totally understand why something like that is never going to be a viable option to you. But as you are an experienced modellist and a bits hound extraordinaire, I'm sure you will do okay despite the new stuff being unusable for you.
Happy holidays!
EDIT: Since you have firsthand experience with the nuCadians now, can you tell me how much hope is there for kitbashing nuCads with the plastic DKoK? I have been thinking about expanding my DKoK KillTeam into a smallish IG partol for 40K (Allied detachment style), but for that, I'd want plastic artillery and heavy weapons platforms. Do you reckon the nuCad Artillery & Hvy Wpn platform kits could work kitbashed into plastic DKoK, so as to create Krieg artillery & Hvy Wpns? Since the DKoK kit comes with two kneeling models, I'd think I'd mostly need nuCad arms compatibility in terms of scale..
tnaks Tauist. I did throw my toys out the pram a little there but I was just pissed that the new models are just too tall against the current ones.
however, As you say, I'm a perrenial bits-hunter so they'll get used if not just as bits, perhaps a new army might be in the offing next year? we shall see...
nuCads have pretty good clean arm joins.
much like the DKOK plastics. I'd say the two should be pretty interchangable in the arm regions.
meaning that the kriegers will definately be ok with the nucad arms. (I feel anyway)
the pads on the Nucads are a bit sleeker than the DKOK ones but the two are close enough so that as long as you use both right and left arm of the cadian on a krieg model they wont be mismatched. and will still look good if models are mixed in the squad too...
TBH with a bit of GS, to fix the neck join, there is no reason you couldn't graft a dkok head onto the new artillery torso (Im thinking of the sitting guy in particular) and then fit the rebreather tube into a suitable pocket mounted on the chest (a single one from the assault or heavy intercessors kits would be ideal).
you'd not notice any of the real scale issues I have as my models are 90% anvil. making them +/- the scale of FW Elysians (or second edition guardsmen if You're an oldblood, like me).
But The dkok and nuCads should be fine. and I've handled both kits so AFAIC you can trust me on that one. but I'm not going to say it'll be easy. nothing worth doing ever is...
Adeptus Mechanicus Scribe Dorothy Maitrykes has been in service to the Omnissiah for untold years.
Dot currently finds herself writing her memoirs about her time in the Eoforwich system...
Yup, another Anvil female mini, the 'scribe'.
Again, taken from the sisters of the burning rose range, she oozes 40k vibes.
I went for classic ad-mech scheme, but kept the white to a minimum, to prevent the santa-look from creeping in.
I did do the feather-quill white as a compromise.
The rest of her kit is the usual bronze/brass and steel you'd expect from the ad-mech but I decided to add the green to the holster for some interesting contrast to all the warm tones of the red-robes/brown-leathers and to tie her in with the eoforwich troopers a bit.
one touch I added at the last minute was the turquoise marbley finish to the scroll-tube as a nice reference to the GW studio third edition Dark eldar (and also the deamonhunter) minis that often had this effect/scheme on. ('twas Matt Parkes that started that off I believe).
That's a great sculpt and your paintjob does justice to it as always. Thanks also for elaborating on the kitbash potential of the new IG plastics, arm swaps are probably going to be enough for me to get acceptable artillery bashes done
Agent William, J Blazkowicz
A master of stealth and secrecy, B.J, is the filey droptroop's bad-boy of espionage and terminal action seeker.
Armed with a silenced bolt pistol and mono-filament dagger, B.J is sent into enemy territory to seek and destroy enemy targets, his demolition charges making short work of enemy vehicles and bunkers, in and out with nothing but bodies and smoking rubble to show he was ever even there...
so yeah, this is my Filey version of Sly Marbo.
yup I know I already did the rioteer for the 39th's Marbo but I felt the filey could use someone similar!
I chose wolfenstein's protagonist as the inspiration due to the filey's american theme...
based on anvil stuff, he uses the d-day torso with fatigue legs, got to have the matching kneepads with the rest of the filey troops right?
The head, pistol and holster all come from the scoutsprue, the silencer a piece cut from an imperial tank smoke-launcher to better match the design of the astartes sniper and stalker bolter silencers some.
The silenced boltpistol was a nice nudge to both the silenced sten and luger in rtcw and a suitable weapon for infiltration and assasination if ever I saw one...
His knife is from the oldcadian sprue but whittled down into a stabbier point to make it look more like the commando knife from RTCW.
The dynamite charges are from the old whf handgunner's sprue and the pockets are straight off the assault intercessor sprue.
The lid on his waist is cut from a victoria lamb arcadian head and was just added for a bit of interest but any would have done I suppose.
I just liked the pack of fags tucked into the strap.
Yes, the pose is more or less the same as on my 39th infantry sgt. But this time I have left the arm joint un-glued so that this pose is also possible:
That's wild! If someone said to me they'll use a SM scout head on a regular human model, I'd think there'd be no way you could make it look decent, the head being enormous and all.. And yet, here it is, and it looks great somehow! Well done
BJ looks great, love the Wolfenstein reference and that is the best use of that scout head ever (including on scouts themselves ) Extra points for the pose-ability!
You know, I've never understood all the hate out there for the scout heads.
I love them! I've been using them on guard since back when guard and scouts were both metal! (was a wastefull and expensive method back then but it got results nonetheless!)
17 of my royston rifles have them and 6 of my 8 spaceshark scouts use them too. ok the scouts were based on palanite enforcers so the scale is better but the roystonrifles are just anvil guardsmen.
I think it comes back to the scale style.
anvils scale is closely linked to the classic guardsmen proportions but is just a lot more refined on the details. therfore a slightly large head doesn't always look jarring as we've been programmed by GW to accept them, as all the original metal guard were that way.
at least thats my assumption
in fact the (now) older plastic cadians heads were too, just try putting an old cadian head on on a nucadian body.
its a bobbleead doll... LOL
Olthannon wrote: ...I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the new cadians
oh, ok then this is a wip shot of an upcoming regiment I have in mind. The Selby 151st Infantry Division.
shown here are two kill-team veteran characters I have so far.
Col. Falk - partial to a meta-bomb and a good old pose-up... scout-head again (you've set the bar for a challenge guys!) and anvil fatigue arms with slung 'york' pattern lascarbine. the hands are from the gsc's neophytes
Spence - always keeps a shotgun handy, for close encounters Anvil watch-cap head and spare knife and GSC's shotgun arms (salvaged from my old gsc's minis) with spareshells onthe webbing fromthe DW kit
yes I've got over my tantrum around the scale issue of the nucads vs the anvil minis. the answer? new regiment. if they stand alone and are all made from the nucads, problem solved... ish...
looking at the new stuff, as I've already said, the nucads have just as much in common with the metal mini's designs as they do with the 2002 cadians.
the webbing, the redesign of the helmets, the kit on the webbing etc... all nice design cues that hark back to the 2nd/3rd edition aesthetics.
However, I'd been trying to figure out what it was I've been missing, so-to-speak on the most recent guard minis thats present on the old ones and not the new ones and today it hit me.
its the bloody shoulderpads!
many of the old guard minis had pads the same as the cadians of the time, the over-the-shoulder pad, not around-the-shoulder pauldron style.
the cadians, tank crew, tallarns, even the tanith first had them.
with this in mind I set about getting something appropriate and hit on the necromunda vansaar pads. literally perfect for the job. I could have shaved off the stripes but these reminded me of the tanith ones and I found I rather liked painting the extra detail back when I did those so I figured they were good here as-is. saves a hell of a lot of work and still does the job exactly as I wanted it so jobs done on those AFAIC...
now this opens new problems. only arms without existing pads will look the part. meaning two things. either the arms have to be from someone like anvil or mad-robot or the existing pads must be meticulously removed and resculpted as cloth as needed (as I've done ont he GSC shotgun arms)
a mix of this will be present as/if I continue this.
Although these two have bare-heads (scout and anvil respectively), I will be using helmeted heads but not the nucads.
I will say only one thing about those; "Batter up!".
Instead I shall be using anvil alternatives with some greenstuff tinkering to look a little more akin to the classic cadians.
Before you suggest it, No, I shant be using Vikky Lamb's arcadian heads either as I'm not a huge fan of that particular sculpt. (the faces? I dunno. something just feels off about those and I want some gasmask ones too and anvil has something ideal on that part.)
A good mix of weapons and a ton of character is the intent. we shall just have to see If I succeed on that part though...
I've still a dozen filey guys to get done first... sigh... why do I always do that, eh?
I go and start a new project that gets my imagination burning with ideas before the previous is quite finished?
but then don't we all in this hobby?
oh yeah the black parts are scavanged off of my old GSC engineer conversions (I did for the proto-royston rifles) that I stripped in the safety-clean tank at work.
five minutes at 35 degrees C and a quick going over with a toothbrush and airline and they're back to undercoat.
yes, I found a quick, easy and safe way of stripping plastic minis... its a miracle! shh... dont tell GW they'll cry with dispair!
Excellent work, this is my favourite thing about the Guard. You can really convert some cool original regiments. The shoulder pads were a great choice.
thanks folks, been too busy for painting but here are four more of the WIP's of the Selby 151st veterans:
O'neil - master of looking cool at all times, even under fire... anvil fatigue arms, beret head and the hand from the cyberpunk hackerpad for the smoking-posed fingers.
Clint - Stone-cold Cut-throat killer... another with the Anvil watch-caps (like 'spence', the shotgunner I showed before) this one uses the gasmask one to hide his face and give him a bit more menace and mystery. the knife is the new bayonet from the cadian sprue but mounted on the DKOK flamer support arm hand.
and yes, geting the lasgun on this posed arm was an absolute cowson... but well worth it I feel...
Ford - All-round bad-ass soldier. A little inexperienced but makes up for it with enthusiasm and confidence. Rolled sleeve arms from anvil, another beret head (this time goggled) and more time than I'd care to admit getting the arms and gun to allign in a manner that looked convincing.
It came out better than the one I did for the bebbanburg commando but I feel thats down to both my increased experiance and the fact the nucadian proportions make the lascarbine's stout proportions a little less exaggerated somehow...
kinda how the scout-head on 'Falk', the meltabomber from the other post looks ok considering how much larger it is than the nucadian heads.
Sgt. Basilone - hero of legend this one's based on the real-life marine sgt who's acolades went on to inspire the captain america legends... go look him up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Basilone (or go watch HBO's 'the Pacific' )
Identified by his iconic "stinger" heavy-stubber, (yes, also from anvil) this mini also shows off the Anvil M1 helmet heads that my regular troopers of the 151st will be wearing.
These other troopers are to be considered veterans/kill-team specials, Basilone being a one-off special character (like Harker if he's still in the codex?)
The rank and file will also be sporting M1 helmets, both with and without net covers and gasmasks, and will be armed with the classic 'galaxy' pattern lasgun (for that oldschool 2nd/3rd ed cadian look) because the 'york' pattern lascarbines are expensive and bloody hard to convert to look good on the model's arms, LOL so consider those bullpup carbines as for the veterans only...
Aha yes, the slippery slope of every Guard collector - creating new regiments!
Nice combo of parts indeed, mate. I do like those ‘heavy stubber’ arm sets - I’d love to do a squad or two of heavy shock troops wielding some of them like the Jantine in Gaunt’s ‘Ghostmaker’.
I have a sergeant in the same bolt pistol and scout head pose lol!!
Nice work on the new regiment!
I kinda had the opposite head problem to you with the old Cadians, a lot of the Necromunda heads were too small to use with them...
LOLs I never had that problem as the anvil figs looked fine with necromunda heads!
however the new cadian heads are really really small... I refer the anvil sized stuff on them whic is a good size between old(2002) and new (2022) cadians...
First of the Selby 151st done:
Yup I know, the colurscheme is a rehash of my old Royston 111st...
In all honesty the Selby 151st is kinda just a reimagining of them; the bullpup rifles, the colourscheme, the characterisations, all in common with the 111st, but just done better. I've learnt a lot since then; My conversion is better resulting in more natural poses, my GS sculpting vastly improved and most of all the painting is tonnes better. IMHO anyhow...
more soon...
including this guy;
he uses anvil arms, (which were mismatched, but are fixed with a bit of GS for a matching rolled sleeve)
His head is from the reptillian overlords Space-nam sprue.
But more on that later...
they are indeed a fair base for conversion, once you get past all the usual hissyfits and grumbles of a hobbyist thats spent 30 years in the game and cringes at the thought of any change being anything else other than bad news.
truth is they are good. and its as simple as that.
a bit tall, yes but good nonetheless.
I shant pretend that converion is easy by any means, but that is more than likely the added effort of trying to make my own bullpup lasguns out of mk4 heresy flamers and then grafting those onto 3rd party arms and then in turn grafting those onto the cadian torsos.
nucadians are a bit wider in the torso by half a mill or so (not got my vernier calipers about this weekend so cant say 100% for sure how much bigger exactly)
making arm swaps a little fudgey, but nothing a good setof clippers, a knife and a pack of greenstuff cant fix...
I think that DKOK rifle arms would look great on them, for exmple. Alas I've used all mine on the Filey drop-troops or I'd show one as a proof of concept but I'd say off the top of my head that they'd look the part no problem...
also, FYI, the new cadian heads are +/- the same scale as the plastic DKOK ones...
just food for thought...
also, anyone after the new cadian heads, I shant be using mine (too small I feel), so drop me a message if you're in dire need of any specifics...
Brill work, I've got that itch in my head to start a new IG regiment and this isn't helping! It started ever since I started reading the new Gaunts Ghosts book.
Thanks guys. lots more to show this weekend I hope.
must ask you though, anyone got any Idea where in the cursed-name-of-the-eye can I find some scout missile launchers...
one would do for now but I think I'll need at least three... yup more conversion fodder incoming...
If you've one or more knocking about I'd be only too happy to take them off your hands for the appropriate price/trade.
Marine ones would do at a pinch but its the everso slightly smaller nature (it is mostly inperceptable I know) and ease of conversion that the scout one affords that attracts me to it. the current tactical and devastator launchers have gone a step backward and are all but one piece; gun arm and puldon.
making the desired conversion both messy and cumbersome, let alone expensive and time consuming...
none on bitzbox (big surprise) and ebay is surprsingly empty of them...sigh...
Nothing painted to show as yet as I've had a bit of a weekend of chores and stuff that crept up on me but I've got some bits I built as WIP during the week to show, so even If I dont get any painiting done tomorrow, theres something to see!
Major Sterling
this one uses anvil head and arms (one is cyberpunk sprue, tother fatigue)
the bullets on the webbing are anvil, the radio and smokegrenade from the spacenam sprue and the pistol is orlock necromunda on a GSC jackals hand. the holster is from the nucadian sprue.
in other news I've been getting one hell of a piss-poor service from Bitzbox of late. lots of missing bits in three orders in a row now.
the first I overlooked. the second I called craig on and he claimed it was out of stock even though there were four on the site when I ordered. I pressed him still and got a refund for the the missing bits then discoverd the lasguns I ordered were wrong too. and now again, bits missing... Sigh... I've got no apology about it either. Three times now and
I think its pretty bad all told so do be carefull and check what you get is what you order in future...
Sorry, I don't think I have any Scout ML's lying around.. I think I only ever bought two Scout boxes (one regular & one sniper scout box), so unless both of them come with a ML bit, I've used mine up as I have 1 ML scout built & painted..
Did you check bitsandkits.co.uk ? They had a site makeover last week, now they have a "email when restocked" feature which is a godsend.. Already got me a spare Deimos Predator front plate for my Rhino thanks to the new feature, those are quite hard to come by..
Its true that sterling is just dying for some heretic to make his day...
yeah the scouts in my collection are all metals too... did find a missile launcher on forbidden gaming uk which looks like it, bitsandkits (thanks tauist!) and bitsmonster may end up being my bitz shops of choice from now on.
regarding bitzbox Im utterly disgusted with craig to be honest.. not even so much for the repeated mistakes, as we all do that, nor for the price in truth, as its pennies mostly, but its the principle of the thing. Im paying for it I should get it...
No. I'm most irked for his attitude about it when questioned on it.
Anyway, that unpleasantness aside!
Although I got a fair bit of painting done on a couple of the selby guys today, the light has gone a bit gak now, meaning that I've had to stop untill next week at least till I get those done.
however I thought I'd share with you this concept for a selby 151st specific heavy-infantry/stormtrooper.
based on palanite enforcer (has the right shoulders ) with gsc arms, a nucadian backpack grafted on and primaris infiltrator pockets for the chest and waist pockets.
Smoke grenade from the spacenam sprue and the other nades from the sternguard kit. the head is, of course, anvil.
the boot knife is nucadian and the blotcroppers from the DKOK kit.
the radio is from the comlik guy in the nucadians too, just without all the extra tubes and nonsense on it...
yes its bigger than a nucadian but then so is a nukasrkin and yes needs a 28.5mm base
SO I got two of those new Selby 151st guard done today:
Apone and Clint.
As you can see, where I've not used the beige on the sleeves on clint, I've endeavoured to continue the colourscheme, elsewhere on the mini, namely his grenades... I think thats a fair compromise and something I'll likely do on t'others in the squad.
I've found moving the colourscheme around can create a sense of induviduality but as long as enough of the full scheme is used, the minis will still look cohesive as a unit. hopefully!
Clint's mask is done in DeathKorpsdrab, which is essentially a dark olive green. Alongside the black watch-cap I feel it gives him a darker, sneakier vibe that I was after...
Apone features a head from the Spacenam sprue and was chosen as its a nice field cap thats in the right scale fort he other heads I've been using.
I've been on an SG1 re-watch of late and it's clearly inspiring the minis I'm making. bullpup rifles, watch caps, field caps etc...
its not an exact rip-off by any means but a good reference point nonetheless...
Apone features some spot colour in the form of his blue-nylon rope bundle and his white cup. which now I lok at it could pass for a kahzi-roll... sigh... damn my eyes...
In other news, Ive regigged the heavy infantryman:
Sgt Everard reporting for duty...
Yup, I went for the madrobot colonial marine lid in the end as someone that much up-armoured would just have to have a helmet.
his york pattern lasgun is held on an anvil KSG arm and the other arm is fromthe fatigue command sprue.
the resultant pose is clearly stollen from the primaris sgt that came with the darkimperium set but it works so I shant complain.
why the changes tothe weapons? well the autogun just wasnt doing it for me. He looked too seperate from the troopers somehow.
the bullpup lasgun ties him in. the resultant space on the belt was filled with a radio from the spacenam sprue and the belt itself has had a skull motif added to match the nucadians... much better I feel...
thanks guys.
got some serious tendonitis going on on my right elbow of late so I'm giving my arm a little rest for a while so nothing painted this week.
however, I thought I'd show you the first specialist of the 151st;
Sgt Riley
Master of all things explosive, Riley has never found a problem he can't solve by blowing it up...
yup. made from the standardbearer/specialist from the new command squad sprue, Riley is about as standard issue looking as any of these conversions have been as of yet.
All I've done really is a headswap and shaved of the pad from the left arm. then added the vansaar ones to the shoulders.
other additions include the smoke grenade from the spacenam sprue and two of the gsc grenade triplets to make a belt of 'nades for his back...
I got this-un done:
The heavy infantryman based onthe palanite enforcer.
yeah, as far as a stand alone mini goes its fine, I supose, but I'm not 100% sold on this one entirely... not sure why either, but I do know that I shant be making more of them I feel...
There's proven to be a lot of pathos in the plucky Tau grunt, could be fertile ground for you ... or this could just be a very well painted trophy for the Guard
osjclatchford wrote: I got this-un done:
The heavy infantryman based onthe palanite enforcer.
yeah, as far as a stand alone mini goes its fine, I supose, but I'm not 100% sold on this one entirely... not sure why either, but I do know that I shant be making more of them I feel...
You've totally nailed that "Colonial Space Marines" vibe with this one! Game over man, game over..
You going on a xenos tip? Maybe a lil Gue Vesa thing? tell us more..
today its Reveal time!
NO, not gue-vesa, that would be a Kais of mistaken identity!
No, this particular guard-target-practice tends to target back...
Shas'la T'au Kais, hero of Dolumnar IV, Mont'au...
Yup, its La'Kais, of THQ and Kuju's 40k Fire Warrior PS2/PC game of 2003!
Modelled with his Tau railgun/imperial Plasmagun loadout fondly remembered as the dream combo from the game! I imagine this model to show Kais around the time of the mission he undertakes for Captain Ardias to destroy the captured titan. Anyone who's played it knows what I mean, the railgun/plasmagun combo is a must to get though that mission and at that point you start feeling like an unstoppable Mont'au murdermachine as you plow your way though untold chaos marines and arcane abominations... pure class...
In actual truth the game was not good. especially when played again with todays eyes. it was clearly designed for the PS2 in mind and the PC port (which I had) was just that, a cheap port over that felt sluggish, overly easy with very, very poor accuracy and feedback from the weapons and poor modelling and texturework that left it feeling more like a fan-mod for quake2 than an independant game from a multimillion pound company.
still it was the only 40kfps available to me and I still played the guts out of it, and have a fuzzy nostalgia for it thats probably a lot more rose tinted than it has any real right to be, but so be it...
As such, I've had this model on the back burner in one state or another for twenty years now.
The pose was always intended thus. in fact the torso, legs, head and backpack are all 1st generation tau plastics.
I had originally intended to use the metal railgun arms of a pathfinder back-in-the-day, but never got around to buying a blister of them to do the conversion. for those not in the know, the railgun hand-rifle version was first created for the fps game as an advance prototype that La'Kais discovers and makes good use of, before it was then placed into the rulebooks and mini range for pathfinders...
Anyway, long years passed and eventually the plastic pathfinders were relaesed. I snapped up the railgun from bitzbox as soon as it came available and then hit a new hiatus.
I knew I wanted the imperial plasmagun on his backpack to show the reference to the game;
fire warrior, check
iconic railgun, check
imperal secondary weapon.... hmm
yes I suppose anything would have done, autogun, lasgun, melta or boltgun, hell, even a chaos bolter, but I wanted that plasamgun/railgun combo. it was plasma or bust for me.
but the problem was the size of it. the metal ones were huge and looked so absurdly cumbersome and chunky. likewise the (then new) commandsquad plastic marine plasma was too chunky too...
so back in the box with him till later...
fast forward to now and the nucadian's plasmagun is scaled down just enough to look the right size on the backpack without looking absurd and still classic enough in its design to look right!
yes its not got the rear-stock but in truth thats only ever really visable on the game's world model, not the view model so I can except it. Also, once painted in steel with red muzzle with blue pipes colorscheme of the game's gun it was perfect.
in fact the observant will note that there are a few liberties I've taken on the mini. Kais' railgun is not the colourscheme as on the experimental one he picks up in the game but in fact the studio army's black/yellow combo, because I felt the model would get lost in a sea of yellow otherwise and it just looks good to me.
Many might say thats a bit of a copout and I should have done the railgun 100% as in the game but at this point I'm just glad its got paint on it now!
his kit on his legs is a single pod of photon nades and a pocket from the palanite enforcers. perhaps this is an imperial ammo pack of plasma-cells for his plasmagun..?
Also other errors of Tau standard design/accurate to the game include, the tau icon's colours are inversed, the backpack is two-tone not full yellow, his fingerless gloves and 'sandle' style feet were not in the game, the boots and gloves covering more of the hands/hooves, and the undersuit is more brown than red tone of the game.
but I'll say now, this is hindsight as I painted this from memory alone and decided that I should insist on doing so, so as not to dictate to myself that "it MUST be this way" and thus get in the way of what's turned out to be some cool design cues that make it unique and show my skills off much better, resulting in a well balaced colourscheme that complements the model more. making it more than a sea of clean yellow and black.
the 32mm base was a recent build, bigger-base to show off his importance (I suppose he could be a cadre-fireblade to lead your fire-warriors in the game? or something for kill-team?)
and used slate, crackle and cork, painted desert with the addition of a few static weeds to represent Dolumnar IV's somewhat barren enviroment... its a nice bone colour that makes the yellow look more saturated against it. which is always nice...
Oh, and Because someone will ask (they always do when anyone paints yellow, LOL),
the yellow was achieved by first undercoating two coats of xv88, then two coats of averland sunset foundation paint, which I bought all those years ago just to paint this mini! LOL, then shade the recesses with agrax earthshade then highlight up with ushabti bone, then wraithbone then pure white to dot and scratch.
All in all a great walk down memory lane that got me brave enough to paint not only a xeno race but also a yellerun! quite a leap for me but well worth it in the end. It even got me online to buy myself a copy of Simon Spurrier's novelisation of the game which I vaguely remember reading back when the game was relased.
for those interested, events after the game show that La'Kais ends up suffreing from extreme PTS in a tau hospital after the ordeal of Dolumnar IV.
poor cowson went from Hard-Kais, to Damage-Kais to Nut-Kais...
so...Kais-Closed for our favourite goatboy?
we can only hope not...
La'Kais looks great! I loved Firewarrior, it was such a great game. Much better than Space Marine, even if the graphics were dated at the time of release. Never finished it though, that level where you descended into the chaos hole and every chaos space marine had a rocket launcher beat me every time.
Love the work you've done across all of your projects. Been quietly watching for a long time.
Loving the Kais model. Firewarrior was one of my favorite games as a kid. One of the reasons I like Tau so much. Thanks for sharing the paint recipe too!
Yup, I used the spare shield from the Anvil D-day Captain and the Cap-style head from the Anvil M1 helmet sprue.
the body is the standard nucadian with vansaar pads my other 151st use and the gun is from the Atalan Jackals.
To play up the 'First one over the line' look I used some old 1:35th sandbags I had knocking about, a bit big but will do.
As a final detail I also added a small section of hand tied barbed wire help to sell the image even more.
Yup, I used the spare shield from the Anvil D-day Captain and the Cap-style head from the Anvil M1 helmet sprue.
the body is the standard nucadian with vansaar pads my other 151st use and the gun is from the Atalan Jackals.
To play up the 'First one over the line' look I used some old 1:35th sandbags I had knocking about, a bit big but will do.
As a final detail I also added a small section of hand tied barbed wire help to sell the image even more.
What a gorgeous piece! You've outdone yourself this time, the conversion looks flawless. Kudos!
Not sad at all to see another Captain Rogers from you Cool to see him made from Nucadians - I wouldn't have guessed that shotgun is from GW, looks shockingly functional and only a little out of scale (but perfect on this mini).
Thanks guys. very happy with him to be honest.
Half way through my holiday and have I got some of those filey 42nd troopers done as planned? not a chance...
no, typically I'm just making up more Selby 151st guys... sigh...
anyway, here's the latest WIP to share:
Colonel Sumner.
As hard and unyeilding as the 'York' pattern bolter he carries, Sumner believes that true officers lead from the front and should always be where they are needed most; leading their men where the action is thickest.
yup. a hard as nails leader for the force.
the whole model came about from me just playing about at making a bull-pup bolter that matched the york lasguns nicely and I settled on a SOB boltgun (for its detail, smaller scale and second edition yummyness) and then grafted a lasgun pistolgrip and buttstock as well as the mag assembly from a third edition bolt pistol.
The pose is suggested at by the Chest-mount-rig available for a P90. yeah, I know. A bolter is heavy as can be and all that jazz but its 40k and anything goes if looks cool right?
The core body is a nucadian sgt with vansaar pads.
I used anvil arms as usual, the left being the bangalore arm from the D-day special, but rejigged to remove said explosive tubes and replace with the HH bolt ammo double pouch, in turn held on the back with a strap with shells on from the deathwatch sprue. a single bullet from one of these is also on the front to hide the fudgey join and damage to the chest-webbing near the right arm. the right hand is from the nucadian artillerymen and I've replicated the glove detail on the left hand with a bit of GS as best I can. simple, but nessacary, I feel.
The knife is a kabar from an anvil set and the head also, obviously an anvil one.
Although quite unfinished, so far, the base uses a sandbag from the nucadians and a little bit of hand tied barbed wire.
Although there's much else to paint on the back burner I'm not sure I can resist painting this one next...
You appear to be churning out these guardsmen at an incredibly fast rate considering the quality of the painting/conversions/bases/everything. Are you sure you don't have a team of slaves in your basement?
I especially like the weathering on the blue for your Not-Captain-USA.
As you say, Guardling, the 'york' pattern bolter is very reminiscent of the SA80. So much so that I did a synthetic green pistolgrip and stock to reference it even moreso. However it makes sense too, synthetic stock in place of wood helps keep the weight down, a bolter being heavy enough as it is...
This was a blast to paint, the anvil beret heads have lovely character, even with goggles.
I did the beret red because, well it just works on a command figure and is a nother nice reference to us brits, like 40k's answer to the RMC's.
the other guys are on the way. perhaps I might even get some of the long suffering filey drop troops done in the meantime...
But... well, I have fun painting, so I'm happy for you.
