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Tarkonis IV - Planetary Survey

Segmentum: Ultima
Sector: Dartus
Sub-sector: Ulch
System: Tarkonis: 7 planets (I through VII)

Surveyed: Unknown; the system was brought into compliance near the end of the Great Crusade, circa M31.

Satellites: 0 save for Tarkonis II (1) and V (4; 2 populated)

Tarkonis

Summary: Mining/agricultural world and home to the Blood Stalkers Space Marine Chapter; the planet exhibits no tilt of its axis in relation to the local star which in turn causes the equatorial region to exhibit arid desert climate while the polar regions, devoid of ice, host flourishing agricultural expanses.

Population: 4.5 billion (human and abhuman)
Mean Surface Temperature: 27 degrees Celsius
Seas: 62% of the surface is covered by shallow seas. The extreme heat at the equator results in heavy evaporation which in turn precipitates in increasing amounts with distance from the equator.

Principle Exports: Foodstuffs and ore mined primarily from neighbouring moons;
Principle Imports: Munitions; Arms and weapons.
Food Supply: Food is grown on-world with excess exported off-world as part of Imperial Tithe.
Urbanisation: Vast cities exist centralized around the space ports used to transport workers to the ore rich moons of neighbouring planets. The vast expanses of agricultural land are sparsely populated.

Military Presence: Tarkonis IV serves as the home world of the Blood Stalkers Space Marine Chapter. Novitiates are chosen from the system's populace during ceremonial events which take place once every 5 years. Hopefuls are given a combat blade and water prior to beginning a trek through the equatorial barrens. Having survived dehydration, sand wurms and extreme heat, survivors are often given the chance to undergo the process to become Space Marines. This event had historically been held once every ten years; however due to the gene 'flaw' of the Blood Stalkers, this event has become more frequent. An Imperial Guard Regiment is stationed on Tarkonis IV which is drawn upon to serve in nearby conflicts. The Adeptus Mechanicus Warhound Titan Dais Mortae is also stationed within the system.

Imperial Forces on Parade 989.M41

3rd Company Colonel and command squad (counts-as Straken)


3rd Company 2nd Platoon Command Squad


Commissar Orlav attached to 2nd Platoon


3rd Company 1st Veteran Squad


3rd Company 2nd Veteran Squad


3rd Company 3nd Veteran Squad


4th Auxiliary Ogryn Detachment


42nd Heavy Weapons Detatchment


<Classified> Psyker Battle Squad attached to 6rd Company

Chimera assigned to <Classified> Psyker Battle Squad


19th Recon Squadron - Sentinel 5

Nice work on the chimera. I kinda wish I had seen this mod before doing my own ones

Regarding the sentinels though, AT-STs have many more weapons than sentinels are allowed. How will you deal with that?

I decided to go nuts and bought an IG army online. My order hasn't yet been shipped but I'm not giving up hope! I've purchased from this vendor previously and they seem legit, I'm assuming it is just issues with out of stock manticores.

My current list idea is pretty dirty; avoiding that however, here are a few of my ideas:

-All squads in chimeras which I plan to convert to 'set-back' following a tutorial I've found. The chimeras will also have removable turret weapons so I can convert hellhound weapons for them to change in as desired.

-Veteran squads will be armed with special weapons and converted shotguns (from bolt guns).

-Sentinels to follow AT-ST design based on paulson games' models.

The overall colour scheme I would like to loosely follow is as such:

I'm hoping some cool manticore conversion idea pops up before I start assembling them. I also need to find some inexpensive track guards as they seem not to be on the sprues anymore.

I picked up a chimera in the mean time and I also took my necromunda 'Enforcers' Gang and replaced their weapons to fill a veteran squad position.

Here's my chimera after a lot of cutting:


The multilaser is removable and I'm going to come up with some way to fashion hellhounds out of them. I guess the photo is a poor angle of the back; I placed a single track guard on the rear diagonal and attached handles as a step ladder to the top. I would have liked complete track guards but they're no longer in the chimera kits and I don't plan to spend 30% of the tanks value on forgeworld track covers.

I think I'm settled on Graveyard Earth for the tanks and Khemri fatigues and Charadon Granite Flak armour. Devlan washes and Denab dry brushing to brighten them. I did a quick test paint on the bottom and I definately will be having a friend spray gun them as these light browns have really poor coverage.

Flinty wrote:Nice work on the chimera. I kinda wish I had seen this mod before doing my own ones

Regarding the sentinels though, AT-STs have many more weapons than sentinels are allowed. How will you deal with that?

Not play WYSIWYG Actually, I'll probably undersling some heavy bolters or something for the look, and leave the sides bare. I'll just claim the weapons are whatever I'd like at the time. My gaming group is forgiving of WYSIWYG weaponry so long as the parent model is correct and I don't play tournements; if I did, I doubt sentinels would be in the list haha.

I've never had the opportunity to post such a picture; so here is what arrived in the mail this week.



Hopefully I'm not too distracted by the plastic crack above.

I've finished up a Veteran Squad or at least 9 members of the squad. I'm really unsure of where the 10th guy ran off to. . . Maybe I need a commisar to stand guard in my closet.

So this is the colour scheme I decided on; the fatigues are khemri brown and the armour plating is charadon granite. The entire model is dry brushed with denab stone and devlan mud washed. The armour is then washed with badab black. I'm pretty happy with them; although as always, my basing is poor but I do plan to add some dead grass to the bases next time I'm out and see what colours are in the store.



I have also put my valkyrie and a manticore together just to try out the new kits which were quite fun.

DO YOU HAVE ANY INFINTRY? HOW MUCH DID THAT COST?

JDM wrote:DO YOU HAVE ANY INFINTRY? HOW MUCH DID THAT COST?

It was 230 British pounds. Quite a good deal actually through an online vendor. And yes, there are infantry in the photo! The battleforce contains 20 men and a command squad. In addition there is a box of 10 men on the top of the pile. Joined with the 10 guardsman painted above that I already owned, I have 40 troops and a command squad which is more than enough to run 4 veteran squads with heavy weapons (also included in the battleforce).

If you thin out your heavy weapon teams you can actually turn the 3 into six provided you have extra 60 mm bases. You just ditch the spotter and throw a guardsman on during gameplay which is removable to mark wounds.

I tried to add some minor battle damage/chips to the vets as you can see in the bottom of the below picture. I tried using a sponge and highlights but I don't feel I can paint well enough for that sort of damage, and I ended up painting over it. It was somewhat subtle but I think it looked really bad up close. I think part of the issue may be the dark colour of the armour. I've seen a lot of really nice battle damaged pieces with that style of chip but it is always lighter armour which I think lends itself better to that technique.

This was my weekend; 2 sets of tracks per tank, 12 pieces per set, 6 tanks; that is a lot of pieces to clean flashing off of!

I couldn't resist making the turret for the Command Chimera so I put that together before the greenstuff was dry. I still have to file all of that down and add the viewports and add rivets and doors, but you get the idea.

Since it was a slow day, I figured now was as good a time as any to throw up some more ideas.

I was looking through my bits box after making a trade yesterday and noticed I had a space whirlwind turret that I havn't been using. I figured it would be a great way to add a potential third Manticore to my army should the need arise.

If you look at the image you can see the whirlwind turret (of course I'm not the first to think of that I'm sure) but it is swappable onto my converted chimeras which is always a plus. You can also see the weapon swap out options available so far. I'm made a multilaser of course and the currently equipped is my counts-as hellhound turret. I doubt I will get any arguements over the hellhound since they share a hull anyway; the prometheum is simply hidden safely inside the shell!

On a general hobby note; I tried out something different than magnets. You'll notice the multilaser has a small tube extending from the rear; this fits into a larger tube on the turret. I was running out of magnets so this seems to work just fine and no chance of messing up the polarity across models!

You and i are alike
buy many guard tanks convert each one of them so that they all look awesome
i was planning to buy 5 more deathstrikes 2 more baneblades and 9 more russes .

So many tanks! I like the look of your conversions, they should look mint when they're all finished!

I bought some grass and had my first attemp with fake grass on bases. I like how they turned out and have decided to seal them now. If you can see close enough, I have added battle scrapes and a bit more highlight. Not too over done though. I mean realistically too many battles and a guardsman won't come home if you know what I mean



I really hope I don't mess up the grass with the sealant. Do people typically do that before or after?

If I were you I'd do the sealant before the grass.

Random grass alternative: dried "old mans beard" lichen. Let it dry out until it has faded yellow. Left intact it makes convincing bushes. Pulled apart, the individual stems look like alien vines.

That Whirlwind based manticore is awesome. I'm extremely tempted to try that out

It would also let my try out that type of chimera mod which I have been fond of for a while. Lots of good work here, thanks for sharing

I love the vets heavy stubber. 'is genius!

awesome work, i whole heartedly approve

Good use of the CHimera, nice conversions.

Looking Great!

For the Vet Sgt. What did you use for his armour? I cant tell if its a SM shoulder pad or just some GS

Regardless consider the idea stolen

It's a Kroot Pad of some kind.

Very nice. Chimeras looking good, and I'll confess now, I'm using that kroot armour idea somewhere

Yeah the heavy stubber is my favourite too. It was originally a necromunda conversion for an arbites model I was making.

Ghost in the Darkness wrote:It's a Kroot Pad of some kind.

Yup, there's a few of them on the kroot sprue and it seems to fit great if you GS a collar around the back of the guardsman neck.

Steal away, I borrowed the idea from Shas'El Tael from ATT; although not sure if it was his originally.

Thanks for the comments! I'm still plugging away.

nice thread you've got. Big up.

While sitting at home and robbing ideas from the internet, I came across a great idea and then made it my own. Thank you to the handfull of blogs that showed up on google with similar conversions that were directly responsible for this.



I am still painting; glueing is just far more fun! Next paint batch includes 4 heavy weapons teams.

I think I might steal the Idea for my Chimeras looks really good and I love the Hydra

Really superb conversions there. I do really like the turrets further back on the Chimera's, it does look really cool.

Found a lot of time over the weekend to get to work on more guardsman; well not rank and file soldiers, but infantry miniatures none the less.



If you can look closely at the 'ablative wound' gentleman standing beside each big gun, you'll notice I tried to mod each lasgun into an AK-47-esque weapon. A bolter clip & an inverted tank lasgun barrel is all you need
This guy is also not on the base and has his own 25mm. I've seen people do this before and it seems like an amazingly simple way to track wounds on the team and also allows you to use the 2nd guy on his own if you are ever short guardsman.

they look amazing.

Really nice work. I like pretty much everything in this army. If I may ask what rules are you using for that converted heavy stubber in your veteran squad? Keep up good work!

autocannons are very good in game. you did a great job on them.

Thanks for the compliments!

Xenon wrote:Really nice work. I like pretty much everything in this army. If I may ask what rules are you using for that converted heavy stubber in your veteran squad? Keep up good work!

I had him done up prior to the codex to use in Necromunda. Now I think he will sub in as a more cadian-esque version of Sergeant Hakkar. A shoulder-slung heavy stubber should be fine to use as a heavy bolter in my group.

Is that convincing enough?


Scrazza : Yeah I've heard they're pretty good. A 10 point upgrade that can take out a transport is pretty fancy especially since it can shoot out of the back of a chimera.

I've updated my first post of the thread with my Space Marine Chapter. I have more to add to it, namely assault marines that are sitting unpainted but right now I'm more into these guardsman. You can REALLY see how I've improved my painting skills though; at least I think so.