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More greeblies around the green putty bock, methinks.

Loving the RT conversions.

And I whole heartedly agree on the raised tracks for the Land Raider. It annoys me with Chimeras and Russes but I lack the energy to do something so ambitious...

Briancj wrote:More greeblies around the green putty bock, methinks.

You're right on the money, Brian, and I think I found just the thing -a broken dreadnought arm I found in my scrap parts.
Also, not that it's important, but that green block is actually the bottom of a SM attack bike.
A lot of the stuff I have is recovered from a badly painted craigslist lot. It's the only way I can afford to hack this stuff up

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Loving the RT conversions.

And I whole heartedly agree on the raised tracks for the Land Raider. It annoys me with Chimeras and Russes but I lack the energy to do something so ambitious...

You should give it a go. The lift job on the first LR only takes 3 extra (single) track pieces, and a few pieces of half round plastic stock.

Ok. A few days of work and house chores, so progress is a little slow, but this is what I have so far.
Just a bit more gap filling and I can move onto the side doors & guns.

The most infrequent space marine army blog on Dakka is back! -and I have room to work for once.

New storage space as well

Without really expecting anyone to still be following this mess of a thread, for posterity and the sanity of the tome keepers I feel I should bring things up to date.

I'll skip explaining my absence since I'm gone more than I'm here.

The Craigslist purchase I made a few years ago, along with a going-out-of-business-sale where I picked up two more tanks, brings my collection close to an old-school 2nd Company -real close! So, I grabbed a random handful of damaged & badly painted "firstborn" from ebay to fill in the appropriate squads.

Now I'm 1 tactical squad and 3 flyers from a full 2nd Company- but, since I'm not really interested in the flyers, my second company will be retooled for deployment to a planet with frequent & intense ferrous dust storms. This will give me a chance to use one or more of the LR models in this project.


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The over all plan is to finish the squad I'm working on, branch out into some smaller 'Kill-Team' sized squads with different color schemes, then bring what I learned back to the remaining command squad & Dreadnoughts.

More conversions and some non-blue paint to come!

I know the 2nd co was detailed in the older codexes. I want to say the 5th, but would have to check. Might have been later. Was more than one of them. The pics with the flyers are from the webstore, and I would not treat as cannon.

 Nevelon wrote:
The pics with the flyers are from the webstore, and I would not treat as cannon.

That's good news. They're fine models, I'm just not planning on buying anymore imperial vehicles atm.

-

Ok. I know everyone's probably seen enough tactical marines to last a lifetime, but here's a few select shots of the army post mud weathering.

One of the last projects for this army is a little hight adjustment at the feet and waist of Brother dreadnought Agnathio, as well as a bit of a more dynamic pose in the arms.

The second dreadnought is getting more of a facelift, but also the same height boost.

Some amateur greenstuff work and a plastic gear from throne knows what, cut at a slight angle gave me the pose I wanted.

I don't know if the last photo shows it, but the second dreadnought is in much rougher shape. Leg broken at the knee, markings filed down on the arm, and he's the wrong chapter.

Since the 2nd takes up too much horizontal space and not enough vertical, I'm thinking about making my shelves into dioramas.

Taking inspiration from the sandstone shores where I grew up, one of the shelves will be a dried riverbed in front of a eroded sandstone ledge.

Well, in the time honored Dakka tradition of starting a huge project before you've finished with another huge project, I am in over my head.

The general shape of the shelf coming together, but it needs more depth. I'm not sure how to break up all the flat areas.

I have some plaster, and I'm thinking about collecting some bark.
I've never built terrain like this befor, so I'm open to suggestions.

I want the area between the shelves to look carved out, and the rest to look like sandstone, but I'm not sure how to get there.

Great idea to make a display

Okay, I think the bark was a good move. Now I just have to establish the border of the background and figure out a way to make the center look purposely carved out.

I've got plenty of time to figure it out, because I'm still waiting on Roman columns from etsy.

Working late into the night. I think I have the shape of the background.

I also found this tutorial on a cheap water effect that I think I can modify for the carved portion of the sandstone: https://youtu.be/2TwpB7sVMn8

I made a mold of a column that honest didn't turn out great, but they're going to be weathered so much I'm hoping it won't matter.

Only two more things to potentially mess up:
-plaster
-paint

That should look great once you finish.

 Nevelon wrote:
That should look great once you finish.

Man, I sure hope so. The closer I get to painting the more nervous I get. I've never really painted anything other than power armor.

Spent the entire day sculpting cracks & battle damage to cover up the mold lines & bubbles from my crappy mold.

I'm fuggin' spent

Adding plaster/paint/ Mod Podge solution gave me an idea of what things will look like with shading & highlighting, and gave me a lot of confidence to finish this project.

I'm stoked with how this is shaping up.

It might need some more debris, as well as:
*undercoating
*paint
*wash/weathering effects
*matte varnish

The cost of this thing is starting stack up, but at least I'll have plenty of supplies left over for terrain projects.

This is already looking fantastic! Giving me some ideas for my display unit. I doubt I’ll get to a full company and need anything of this scale though. It’ll be something to be very proud of once it’s done I’m sure

 gobert wrote:
This is already looking fantastic! Giving me some ideas for my display unit. I doubt I’ll get to a full company and need anything of this scale though. It’ll be something to be very proud of once it’s done I’m sure

Thanks, bud. Glad I could inspire.

I did a little test fit to see how much space the added bark & plaster took up, and things are a bit crowded, but I think it'll work.

If I were to design this all over again I'd probably make the upper level a good 6" longer on both sides.

Previously, I set the Army up so it was facing out towards the viewer, but this time I faced them all towards the empty space in the center of the cabinet, which gave me the idea to suspend a bunch of tyranid gargoyles from strings in the dead space in the center. Maybe print out a picture of a swarm and use it as the backdrop for the cabinet, I'm not sure.

Going through one of the last squads, and I only feel like I'm just now comfortable painting this scheme.
These guys came out super clean

Very nice storage shelf slash diorama!

Pretty epic project. I admire your dedication to sticking with the 2nd ed color scheme.

Guardling wrote:Very nice storage shelf slash diorama!

Thanks for stopping by!
I used to be a competitive player, never saw myself making dioramas, but here we are.

brushcommando wrote:Pretty epic project. I admire your dedication to sticking with the 2nd ed color scheme.

Thanks, bud!
I made the number one rookie mistake of painting the same thing in the same scheme over-and-over, so I never really developed good wetblending, highlighting, and other skills, but I feel like I gained pretty good brush control and learned to dilute my paint better. In the future I'm going to cap my projects at 20 guys, or 2 vehicles at a time.

To that point, I think I'm going to dabble in a few different painting styles, then bring what I learn back to painting the command squad, so the 2nd Smurfs might be leaderless for a while.

The updated checklist -
Convert/paint:
*2 Dreadnoughts
*2 Predators
*1 Rhino
*1 LR Terminus Ultra pattern

When written out this looks like a lot, but I've saved my favorite projects for last.

Clean job on the last squad, they look cool. The dreads look neat, good work reposing the legs on one the left one.

 gobert wrote:
Clean job on the last squad, they look cool. The dreads look neat, good work reposing the legs on one the left one.

Thanks, gobert!
You really gatta have a wide selection of glues and a heap of patience to do any conversion to these old pewter models.

On to my favorite pastime, converting tanks!
I had this MDF conversion kit from Miniature Scenery for so long I almost forgot about it completely.

I really wanted the two Predators in the army to stand out from all the other Rhinos, so a while ago I set aside my Rogue Trader era LR conversion for a Predator (since these days it's quite a bit undersized for a LR).

The MDF kit is perfect for the other Predator and will fit into the rest of the tank conversions nicely, but I still have no idea what to use for the cupola. The standard Predator cupola doesn't look right.

The kit:
https://miniaturescenery.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=21


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I see some gap filling and a whole lot of tiny rivets in my future.

This last Rhino isn't finished, but I'm so excited about how it's shaping out that I have to post some progress pics.

From the depths of a techno-archive, pressed back into service- for the first time since the Invasion of Ultramar in 854.999.M41-for the glory of the Emperor,
The Mk1 'Chronus' siege pattern Rhino with high-capacity 'Scorpion Bolter'