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Hi folks,
some of you might remember the odd pic or mutter from me concerning me "totally doing a guard army". i think i've been posting those for best part of two years. so i really hope that i'll finish this iteration of my renegade guard army, but thanks to two months of free time until the next semester starts, i'm quite confident.

So, pics first:

The Company Command Squad. Astropath (the kneeling guy), 3x plas + carapace armour.


Veterans with 3x melta + demolitions


as above, only one guy is missing due to a little planning/supply problem


the psyker battle squad, a cookie to anyone who can identify all the parts.

next up: some fluff. These guys are a mixture of PDF and convicts, fighting on the supply/mining world of Tessol in the Calixis Sector (don't look at the map, it's not on it ).
They call themselves the People's Army, the Imperial Expeditionary Corps calls them simply insurgents. The overally theme i'm trying to carry through all elements of the army is long coats/robes and gas masks. These troop are fighting in a swampy area that's dotted with refineries, fortified defense silos and small settlements, so some minis are almost up to their knees in the water, while others stand on rubble. Due to spreading corruption, some fighters have started to wear chaos insignia, especially khornate symbols. Others still have imperial markings on their gear. i didn't remove every single aquila, because i think this is an easy way to show that the soldiers are only just turning to chaos and to make them a bit more rag tag.
The army list is here.

that's it for now, more to follow. kind of as a teaser, here are two PIP images of Company Commander Colonel "Grincat" van Sooten:



also, after being almost five years in this hobby, i still haven't gotten the hang of taking acceptable photos. i think i'll build one of those light box thingies. :(

I really like the Commander, nice job. The rest of the army looks good can't wait to see painted photo's.

interesting...i love the use of necron heads in the physker battle squad!

Looks like it's going to be awesome.

Oh I do like that twisted bird thing.....Where's it from?

i'll guess on the necron warrior kit, the skaven slave/clanrats, empire flagellants, a commisar with power sword, and the ghouls kit, maybe some zombie parts too

Cheers, keep up the good work

LFF666

Cool. I must ask how did you cut off the vostroyans heads?

Metal scissors? The only ones I've seen would obliterate the models I used to have a shop class.

the Bird totally give the Commander character! i love it!

Brilliant work. Awesome use of pig-iron heads on vostroyen bodies. Nice job

Shadowbrand wrote:Cool. I must ask how did you cut off the vostroyans heads?

Metal scissors? The only ones I've seen would obliterate the models I used to have a shop class.

In general, you need a fine saw to remove metal components cleanly. Pliers and clippers will just cause havoc.

thanks for the kind words, people!!

Agamemnon2 wrote:

Shadowbrand wrote:Cool. I must ask how did you cut off the vostroyans heads?

Metal scissors? The only ones I've seen would obliterate the models I used to have a shop class.

In general, you need a fine saw to remove metal components cleanly. Pliers and clippers will just cause havoc.

actually, i put them on the radiator for some time to soften them a little, then attacked them with the blue pliers of doom. if you decapitate them at approx the jawline, you don't damage the rest of the mini, after that i simply dremeled the rest off. the only vossy that suffered some damage was the commander, due to how his fur coat, the sort and the head were positioned. he required some touch ups on the fur and a new chainsword blade.
the bird is the familiar of this guy, who took quite some time to get from his standard flying pose to the sitting one. i didnt want to resculpt the wings, so i heated them up a bit with a candle, bent them a little with with softnose pliers, heated them again and so on.

on an update-y note: i blocked in the colours on the veterans and apllied the first washes. nothing spectacular, yet.^^


i'll be posting more pics later today, hopefully after i've found a better place to take pictures.

This is all looking very, very nice, keep it up.

Sweet! Cursed, but very, very sweet.

Looking forward to the paint jobs. Will there be any vehicles or heavy weapons?

thanks, i mean to. although i am despairing at my (lack of) skill at photography. maybe it's the old light bulbs, but the days are so overcast, i can't use natural light. :(




i continued work on the veterans, adding two layers of drybrushing, decals, some weathering on the armour and started colouring the fiddly bits (cables, etc). also started the heat/corrosion effect on the meltaguns.



the first nine penal troopers. they have more scavenged/looted equip than the vets. the bad lighting makes it hard to see, but the jackets and backpacks are in autumn pea-dot camo, they used to belong to the expetionary forces.



wip of my alternate commander, counts-as colonel straken. i know the spear is oversized, even though the model stands head and shoulders taller than a line infantryman. This represents straken doing damage like an MC. it's an old daemon artifact, fluff-wise. his plaspistol/shotgun combo is now a non-imperial combiweapon that fires either sliver ammo or unstable anti-armour shells.



the flakspider tank, counts as hydra. if it works out, this will be the standard chassis for my non-apc chimera based vehicles. it's inspired by hortwerths awesome mechanicus armour, the hellstalker to be precise, though i changed the design of the abdomen and the weapon mount.
i wanted to show that although tessol is an industry-heavy planet, they have harboured non-imperial ideas for quiet some time. i also really dig walkers.^^

Weekend update, carpool edition.^^
the progress on the flakspider:

i took off the fuel tanks and added armour plates.
abdominal armour:

the silver stuff is tinfoil. scrunched up, it's a great, lightweight and cheap filler material. i'm trying to use only parts from the defiler kit to make it easier to mass produce. so far the only non-defiler parts are those from the gun and the head pieces, but i've got lots of those bitz so it should work out.
for side-by-side shots with a chimera and a "portrait" of the spiders heaf, go here or here.
last but not least, the two chimeras. the one with the pred turret is for the command squad. the other one has a baneblade sponson turret. i prefer it over the vanilly one and i still had two lying around from my shadowsword
ccs chimera

pbs chimera

this one is still wip, both need stowage and a long brake fluid bath, but progress is progress.
as you might have noticed, i managed to slightly improve picture quality. i spent a couple of hours playing around with the manual settings on my cam and built a lighting box, the results of which i'm quite happy with.^^
here's a test close-up of some pip veterans:

i'ts not perfect, yet, but it's a step in the right direction. at least i dont have to overflash the pictures anymore.^^

Awesome conversions and a very well executed (heh!) and themed paintjob.

Fantasitc!

As a rule of thumb, I find that success with photos occurs most often under the following conditions:

1. Enough light so that you don't use a flash.

2. Close enough with a good enough camera so that you don't have to use zoom

3. A camera with a macro mode since most of your photos will occur with your camera within 2 feet of the mini

4. A very steady camera

5. A lightbox that helps to reflect light is helpful though I use the term "lightbox" lightly (no pun intended). My "lightbox" is just a four sided box (floor and three sides) made out of heavy stock printer paper and tape. It's cheap and it works.

You don't need expensive equipment to do any of this.

Wow looks great

Love your army and your paint scheme.....my hat goes off to you as a fellow traitor guard player with a very similar looking army.......

thanks for the kind words, guys!
@JB: you're right, the lightbox is really helping.
just a small update on the spider:


i added some etched brass and resin details plus some secondary limbs/mandibles around the head. i didn't disguise the tank tracks on purpose. one of the spider's weak points are the hydraulics in the legs, a fact the imperial soldiers soon learned to exploit. in turn, the tessol military started welding spare tracks over the most vulnerable parts.^^
now i only need five minutes of dry weather so i can get this beasty sprayed. at last it' won't look like my bitzbox and a bottle of glue had an orgy anymore.^^

Sweet chimera conversions. I do hate the stock model so much.

That flak spider thing is awesome! If I ever fall to Chaos I'm stealing that idea!
As are your Vostroyan conversions- keep up the good work!

I like the Chimera (the Flak-Spider is pretty cool too)!

The Chimera's are great and the Flakspiders utterly kick ass. I also really like Straken whats the base model?

@llamahead: the straken is based on the necron lord with warscythe.

updatey time!
i started the conversion of the counts-as marbo:

the idea of the sewed-to-the-face rebreather came from something i saw on warseer, but i can't find the thread anymore. :(

also, i undercoated the spider. it actually starts to look less like a scrapbot:

Very imaginative and different, with great use of the components. Keep it up - Your PSB is one of my favorites of the ones I've seen so far. I'd like to know what parts were used in case I try to copy it.

I am loving the spider!!!

Straken cool!
Chimera, way cool!
but your Spydra takes the cake. very original!

The spider looks great. It fits the traitor theme nicely, since it's reminiscent of the defiler.

now, no piccies in this post (i'll post some this evening), but i have a question: on the counts-as marbo's head, i have three styles in mind: hooded OR hood pushed back, with lank hair over the left side of his head OR no-hood, no hair.
he will have burns/scars on the right hand side of his face (think two-face), and the cape will become, through the magic of moss and glue a ghillie cape.
so:
-hood?
-hair?
-no hair?
thanks.