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Love the idea of the colour coded bottles. I think it would work really well, especially in the way other people suggested in warning other miners. It makes sense for such an industrial setting as the one your IG are based on.

Also colour codes would stop such japes and frivolities as exchanging the Commissars breath tank for Laughing Gas or Ammonia!

also make a rule for exploding tanks

Heh.. Guard already wear paper thin armour... I think rules for exploding tanks are already well attended to by the squidginess of the bearers

Sorry for the long bout of radio silence; I got caught up in tight deadlines the last couple of weeks. Thankfully that project is done with and I get a couple of days breathing space, due to being off ill. Boo to illness, but at least it's given me some time to slap a bit of paint on some figures for you

First up is Leth, who when you last saw him was just plain resin and green stuff.



The colours are a little off as one of my lightbox lamps died and I had to resort to a daylight bulb on one side, otherwise you'd never have any pictures. The main uniform uses the foundation colour, Charadon Granite, washed with the brown wash gives it a nice greyish olive brown colour. Because I suck at doing eyes, I think most of the foot troops will have silvery photo-contacts so they can see in the dark. Characters like Pastor Julius here on the other hand will get proper eyes



He's still a WIP, but as I was posting photos I thought you may want to see how he is progressing too. Bases still need to be finished/worked out for both of them, but I've got lots of basing material now, so it's just a case of playing around for a bit. I swear that it's pure coincidence that they both have facial scars!

Other than those two bits of painting, I've got a bit more background sorted in my head, I just need to get it out, ordered and any gaps filling.

Current thinking is that the radical Inquisitor Lord Fengor has commandeered a Rogue Trader (and his crew) to accompany him and his Black Ship as he travels around, chasing down a huge intergalactic cult/conspiracy (unknown as of yet). On his travels he has also acquired guard elements from a number of different regiments, the most recent being the Junos Moles who were stuck on a mining asteroid that was being overrun by Plague zombines. He's also going to be accompanied by a couple of Demon Hosts and eventually (maybe) a unit of pre-heresy Thousand Sons that got lost in the warp and ended up appearing in the current timeline (possibly ashamed that their Chapter turned to Chaos) as allies. This should allow me to play either Demon Hunters, Loyal Guard or Renegade Guard, depending at what point we meet Fengor in his career

Trying to work out if I can modify Anima:Tactics Cordelia into an Rogue Trader's companion/body guard, or if the dress is a little too OTT

I'm also considering using Void Viper Wing bikes for Rough Riders as I don't see a Rogue Trader, or an Inquisitor, wanting to carry much livestock around the galaxy. I know the rules don't quite match up, but visually it makes more sense.

You beat me to an update, and with more paint too! Looking good - can't wait to see them in person - and momentarily before orky decapitation

I can't wait to see more of them together, I'm pleased with how Leth looks. Buying the washes was the best choice I made recently

Wow, they look fantastic(er) painted. Just the right amount of colour on them to break up the duller base colours.

The painting really brings out the sculpting well too. Great stuff.

No coloured tanks?

How are you going to base them? Rocks? Shale?

I might go for a mix of crushed rocks over a kind of rock floor (such as might be found in a mine tunnel).

Will the rough riders be a different regiment? I don't really see them fitting in very well with the fluff for the Moles.

My RR are made from space marine bikes with the front forks split to have 2 wheels to make it into a trike, if that gives you any ideas.

Yeah, the rough riders may well be more like a city gang that the Inquisitor thought might be useful; more like the Akira biker gangs

that guardsman and the other dude sure looks good great work

Sweet f**king A!! Excellent work on them although they need MOAR WEATHERING!!

infilTRAITOR wrote:Sweet f**king A!! Excellent work on them although they need MOAR WEATHERING!!

Thanks! There is chipping and weathering on the tank, though it didn't come out too well in the photos. Damn you lights!!
I do plan to add mud to the feet and trousers at some point... this one was more to get the colour scheme right so I can go away and sort out better legs and add the gas tanks onto all the bodies before recasting it all... again!

Speaking of which... guess what I've been doing tonight
There may be photos tomorrow morning


Automatically Appended Next Post:
A very quick update from last night's green stuffing.



They still need a lot of work tidying/evening things up... plus deciding if this is actually what I want, but they look more suitable than the old greatcoat legs I'd previously done

Looking interesting so far. I have to say that the previous model's trousers look pretty cool as well, so perhaps you might want to go for a mix of the "wrong trousers" style power pants and the more regular trousers already featured.

I think the new legs will work well with your overall look though.

Wrong Trousers... Oh god. Now I'm imagining Inquisitor Wallace and Commissar Gromit hunting down and destroying warp tainted cheese. How wrong is that?!

[bwahaha]

Your greenstuff work is very nice.

It makes me miss converting - work has been so mental that my 40k hobby box hasnt moved from the top of the cupboard in 6 months...

but now im feeling all inspired again - maybe when i get back from overseas I will give it a bash!

Thank you, converting was what got me back into GW recently. I missed fiddling with bits to make something slightly different. I don't really get much time for modeling either; I find leaving everything set up on a small table in front of the tv helps as I can do 10 minutes here and there when I stop for food. Doing conversions in short bursts also helps the process as everything has time to cure between stages

The more I look at the legs today, the less I'm liking where they are going. I think I actually prefer the ones on Leth that still have the Cadian jacket oddly. Hmmm. Will have another go tonight with a new set of legs and try combining some of the ideas. I like the new boots (not that you can see them properly in the photo), they look a bit like a smaller scale SM leg as they are supposed to be magboots; unfortunately I don't think the application of the support struts and knee pads are right. I should have used plasticard rods to get an even look.

Speaking of support structure for things. Why is it that power fists don't shatter, or at least dislocate, a Guard's arm when they hit something? You'd imagine that the impact would cause some major damage to the weilder as well as the target. I have plans to rectify this when I get to the command level.

Perhaps they have inertial dampeners? Or some other way of offsetting the reactive force of hitting something really hard... you might be able to use little gas jets that trigger whenever the power fit hits something to stop the recoil taking off their arms.

But I have to say that I am not sure how the power fist works, so there may actually not be much of a forcefull reaction (over and above the force behind the blow), as the energy of the power fist may translate into something other than extra hitting power in order to rupture armour and/gibbs.

I wish that I could set my stuff up in front of the TV so I have something to distract me when tediously painting loads of stuff, but it is all hidden away in the spare bedroom with all the boxes for all our furniture etc :(

Edit: in regards for the new trousers; I did like the old ones, as I said. Perhaps the new ones can be used for HW troopers who need some help to lift the heavy weapons (they might be adapted from small man portable power assit rigs for hauling heavy mining equipment and drills etc)

I do like the idea of mag boots, could have some cool zero-g rules for them (I was thinking about low/zero-g rules in relation to my IG, as they are now almost exclusively space bourne warfare specialists - I have decided ).

To be honest I'm not entirely sure how they work either; it's probably a Handwavium distortion effect rather than physical impact; though there are references to ripping/tearing, which would insinuate some force being needed behind the fist. I can see that working with power armour/terminator armour as you've got a ready support structure with boosted strength etc. But a poor guardsman with flak armour surely wouldn't have the strength to do much of that, even with a distortion field

I just like the idea of needing additional support rigs for these heavier/more forceful pieces of equipment; so I will try to add in visible recoil dampers and some form of arm/body support for anyone with these; or replace power fists with wrist/fist mounted plasma cutting torches; which seems much more fitting given their roles/background.

I like the plasma cutters idea. The burna boy power weapons work in a similar way, so it is not totaly outside of the fluff.

We shall see how it develops; it's probably a long way off before I get around to power fists as Arakasi has suggested we team up for the 40K Doubles Tournament in January to give us both a deadline for our forces. And to have some fun I guess

This means I'll probably be looking at starting some armour soon so his Ork assault has some heavy firepower behind them. Be interesting to see how plans for that develop!

Well, best of luck and I will certainly be interested to see it when it is all done

And of course I will be here to post rubbish in your tread too, which I am sure is a huge bonus

The tanks will still be part of this thread as there will still be Moles as the foot troops; I'm just not sure I'll be using power fists in the list is all I meant

And nothing is rubbish; all comments/ideas are valuable stuff. Now I just need to try and restrain myself at the Forge World stall on Sunday, at least until we've decided *what* tanks I need to buy

Arakasi and I have just returned from GDUK; which I shal henceforth dub Queue Day rather than Games Day. I'm too old to push and shove to see some miniatures in a case somewhere in the hopes of seeing a preview of something new. The Forge World stands were the most interesting, and also responsible for a large hole in my walllet

The Moles have just acquired their first Commissar, a tech priest with 2 servitors, an imperial pilot (to become a Master of the Fleet stand in) and an Artemia pattern HellHound... plus the master class book, weathering kit and the Ork pilot (who sadly isn't joining our fleet, unless I can think of a very very good reason why the Inquisitor wouldn't have shot him on sight )

The FW show cases had lots of nice shiny guard tanks that I'm coveting, but you all know them already. But... there was a sneek peek at an Elysian jeep for IA8 (photo by Emperor's Teeth). It's very cool indeed, but sadly I couldn't get any photos of it as he kept hiding it when cameras were around. I think IA8 and some of the Elysian stuff will be must have purchases if this is anything to go by!

Fantasy Flight were there, showing off the RT book... but failed to bring anything at all to sell (wtf?!). It's looking very pretty and likely to supply some much needed inspiration for my General and staff... whenever Amazon deem fit to deliver it. I said it looked pretty right?

Anyway. Onto other things. Sculpting progresses on the Moles. The bodies have had gas tanks attached and some of the finer detail exaggerated a little bit more so the casts look less flat. Two pairs of legs are nearing completion, I just need to finish the magboots and they should be ready to try casting as well *yay!* That's not all... there's also a body for Elites to use with an almost space suit like structure. I'll try taking some pictures after tea when my fiancee returns my macro lens!

*shakes fist at lens stealing person*

And I look forward to seeing the burning holes in your pockets and the models there in

I forgot to take any pictures last night as I got sidetracked by my nice pile of bits from FW. I only remembered as I was running out the door for the bus this morning; so my apologies for the crappy pictures. Hopefully you can at least get some idea of what's been done.

First up is a comparison between my two servitors. The one on the left is a standard FW version. The one on the right has a heavy bolter made from loads of junk from my bits box and some other minor mods. He still needs some GS work to put his right sleeve back on and to smooth out some of the other areas.



And then we come to the WIP legs. Both sets still need the boots building up more around the top and back, but I got what I was aiming for with the front of the feet.They look/will look a bit like smaller versions of SM legs with the bulky leg protection and the separate feet sticking out. The feet on the right pair were done with grey stuff as an experiment to see what the difference was between grey and green. I'm still not sure...



What I did forget to photograph this morning is the WIP Carapace armour body and the psyker who now actually has a head. Still. that gives you something to look forward to tomorrow

The bus ride to work was spent reading the Armour Masterclass book... damn it's inspirational; though when they talk about some of the steps in the painting process I did want larger photos of what they were doing and why. Sometimes it wasn't overly clear... I do now want an airbrush though, but with the wedding only 4 weeks away I'm not too sure I'll be allowed to buy one just yet (and even then buying a decent one with compressor will be a hard sell, with everything that we need to do to the house!), so I will have to spend the next few weeks detailing the tank, finishing the sculpts and planning what I actually need to buy for the tournament. I'm fairly sure that will necessitate even more tanks, so *obviously* I'll need something faster than a paintbrush to paint a larger armoured force

Does anyone actually have experience of using airbrushes? If I'm just learning, or just painting camo, does it really matter that the pressure won't be constant if I started off with a cheaper, canister powered one instead? I'd imagine that would only be an issue when you get into the finer detail areas rather than doing large blocks of colour?

Love the servitor. Looks like it was meant to be

The legs are looking good too, though the boots look kind of like slippers rather than boots. Are you going to bulk out the calf sections too?

Looking forward to the additional photos.

I don't have an airbrush, so unfortunately can't help you there.

When are you getting married? I am getting married in 4 weeks too (well, 3 and a bit now anyway )

SilverMK2 wrote:Love the servitor. Looks like it was meant to be

To start with it felt wrong to go cutting up a FW resin, but he does look like it should be there. Much more so than the metal GW servitors with heavy weapons... I think I need to order another 4 or 5 to give me all the options for a servitor squad for my Tech priest.

SilverMK2 wrote:The legs are looking good too, though the boots look kind of like slippers rather than boots. Are you going to bulk out the calf sections too?

Yeah, When I said the top needs bulking out, I meant the calf section, sorry. I think finishing the legs needs to be tonight's priority as I need to start building units. Speaking of which... does anyone know if these guys will be tournament legal models if they are cast? I'd hate to build my force and then be turned away on the day...

SilverMK2 wrote:When are you getting married? I am getting married in 4 weeks too (well, 3 and a bit now anyway )

Congrats
We're getting married on Saturday 31st, Halloween. No particular reason, other than the date was free. Everyone is convinced we picked it purposefully

I can imagine, I have no FW stuff, but I feel bad enough about cutting up GW stuff sometimes

I have no idea if they will be legal... I don't play tournaments. I imagine that if you can see enough GW-like parts underneath you can claim they are just converted rather than cast... Not sure though.

Haha! Well done!

We were booked in on the 31st to start with, but the people on the weekend before cancelled, so we stole the 24th

I will give you a toast when I am in Egypt on the 31st anyway

Thanks, we'll raise a toast to you on the 24th too

I think I need to investigate before we go signing up...

I may have found a second tech priest for my RT though. This year's WD subscription model (Squats? What Squats?!). Possibly with some servitors made from WFB dwarves...