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@dantay: Thanks for the info on Shrike... I'll probably experiment with a number of commanders when I get enough army built. Gotta love those force multiplier effects.

@GS: I'd love to, but I just cant. Now right now anyway. I have way too many trades "hanging" out there to take any more. Hang onto those swords and later on when I clear my que we can talk. Thanks though.

@CLion: I finally got some real color shapers... they made it much easier. And a read a little off-handed blurb in another thread that helped a lot, so yes, my GS skills are better now they they were even a couple of days ago. Still have a long way to go though.

@Fifty: The only problem with the IA books is that they are effectively nothing more than fandexes (sp?). If I have to ask permission to use it, I won't put it in the army. I will probably try the characters out in friendly games with my kids or friends, but if I can't use it in any tournament or game I want to, I'm not interested.

@Yggs: Thanks bud. When the time approaches I can remind you.

@Iamwalrus: Thanks! I feel the same way.


I've decided to do a tutorial on how to do the Tranquility Snipers (at least the painting), so I'll be taking pictures at each step. Thus I probably won't post every step here, but I will give you a WIP shot from time to time. At the moment, all three sternguard are primed, base-coated with yellow and washed with sepia. That's where the easy stuff ends. I'll post a shot when I'm done layering on the first of the yellows.

will you be adding those characters into your army fluff-wise. I know you arent writing a fiction blog like Ice-Angel and I, but fluff seems very important to your work with this army, it is one of the reasons why i love this blog, the closeness of fluff and modeling is artistically done! Will you be using those characters and the IA fluff to effect your army layout or what you build, I know you wont really use IA units that have rules cant use much, but you know what I mean?

Would love to see walk-thru on the tranquility snipers, I would mostly love to see the whole process, def the guns! Maybe rename your awesome basing topic into a tranquility sniper topic, since those bases really add a lot to the model, then post up various steps to the model as you go along, they are really great models!

also must say on a side not, i gotta be jealous about how bada**, awesome!, and chatty this blog is! i hope someday I can start one up, not many people can say they have a 57 page P$M blog of epic awesomeness that prob has around 20 pictures of your actual models haha

Ok, so I go on holiday for like 4 days...and you add 2 pages to your blog!!

And your sergeant ends up looking fricken cool!!!

And Santobell starts building Mantis Warriors!!!!

What the hell guys?

Well I'm over my shock, and disappointment that you can carry on without me, and I have to say again the sergeant's pose has really come out tops Gits, nice GS work!

And on the Tranquility Camo discussion, I know that there may not be too much info on the war itself but I can totally imagine a solar system with a white hot sun that bombards it's only life sustaining world with massive amounts solar radiation, resulting in vegetation that has evolved black chlorophyll rather than green. The Mantis warriors make landfall on a planet of yellow sand and black jungle and quickly realize that their usual chapter colours will stand out like a sore thumb and be detrimental to their war effort, and voila, the tranquility campaign scheme! I like to think of the sniper squads sitting in absolute stillness for hours, even days, till their prey moves within range then BAM! they strike! just like the Mantis they take their name from

Just a thought tho...



Oh and thanks for all the support with the Great Wing Debacle, I hope to have pics up in the next couple of days of the first cast and subsequent casts and we will see how they pan out...I will not give up dammit!!!

BLACKHAND wrote:Ok, so I go on holiday for like 4 days...and you add 2 pages to your blog!!

And your sergeant ends up looking fricken cool!!!

And Santobell starts building Mantis Warriors!!!!

What the hell guys?

Well I'm over my shock, and disappointment that you can carry on without me, and I have to say again the sergeant's pose has really come out tops Gits, nice GS work!

And on the Tranquility Camo discussion, I know that there may not be too much info on the war itself but I can totally imagine a solar system with a white hot sun that bombards it's only life sustaining world with massive amounts solar radiation, resulting in vegetation that has evolved black chlorophyll rather than green. The Mantis warriors make landfall on a planet of yellow sand and black jungle and quickly realize that their usual chapter colours will stand out like a sore thumb and be detrimental to their war effort, and voila, the tranquility campaign scheme! I like to think of the sniper squads sitting in absolute stillness for hours, even days, till their prey moves within range then BAM! they strike! just like the Mantis they take their name from

Just a thought tho...



Oh and thanks for all the support with the Great Wing Debacle, I hope to have pics up in the next couple of days of the first cast and subsequent casts and we will see how they pan out...I will not give up dammit!!!

Yes I built a Mantis warrior you got somthin to say bout that hmmm....
I think your right about the camo but you also have to remember that in RT every marine unit had night world camo, jungle camo etc. it seems they were more flexible in their colour choices back then, either way it's an excellent way of giving a style and background to an army with little written history to build from.

(gives me an idea for a conversion squad actually).

BLACKHAND wrote:
And on the Tranquility Camo discussion, I know that there may not be too much info on the war itself but I can totally imagine a solar system with a white hot sun that bombards it's only life sustaining world with massive amounts solar radiation, resulting in vegetation that has evolved black chlorophyll rather than green. The Mantis warriors make landfall on a planet of yellow sand and black jungle and quickly realize that their usual chapter colours will stand out like a sore thumb and be detrimental to their war effort, and voila, the tranquility campaign scheme! I like to think of the sniper squads sitting in absolute stillness for hours, even days, till their prey moves within range then BAM! they strike! just like the Mantis they take their name from

Just a thought tho...

I love this! this has forever taken over my view of the Tranquility Vets haha. Great description!

Gitsplitta wrote:@GS: I'd love to, but I just cant. Now right now anyway. I have way too many trades "hanging" out there to take any more. Hang onto those swords and later on when I clear my que we can talk. Thanks though.

Thats fine, I'll have even more chaos chainswords in a few weeks time.

Sageheart wrote:i would like the Tranquility Vets being rare, but I don't really like how an army looks with just a scarce splattering of other colored units. I've always hated the chaplains being black, libbies being blue, and techpriests being red since it gave this one model a different color and idk just felt out of place in the army. I likked my heros to stand out due to capes, helmets, cool armor, interesting pose, etc.

So that was a bit of a tangent, I think the Tranquility vets should be like a detachment in the way a sisters of battle army can have an IG attachment. i would have the mass army be green, and then have another army in a sense of tranquility vets. This could be sternguard vets, two squads and some sort of HQ model, and maybe another unit or two. They would look rare, but also i feel like it would make the army look less like their was just a scattering of yellow models for some reason. In order for this to work you would need an army with a pretty well sized amount of marines to proportion the vets to green marines. I would say 1.5 more squads of green marines as they are of vets.

I think that would be a good way to split up the two groups and make it aware that they are scarce but also have a good little group of them so it didnt make the amry look so much as a bunch of green with yellow sprinkled in, and rather an army of green and yellow marines, the yellow are rarer..

does that make any sense, or too abstract an idea?

dude i like this idea. but that would mean there are still a lot of vets and that would go against Gits Fluff.

and Git may i say that your army has inspired me too make a Yellow Dark Eldar coven army. because everybody know that yellow is totally stealthy

@Sage: I'll be giving both IA-9 & 10 a good read to be sure. Anything that is good and consistent with my vision of the Mantis Warriors will be gleefully adopted. If I can figure out how to carry off any special characters they present within the context of normal 40k rules, I'll do that.

@Blackhand: Good to have you back buddy. Hope you enjoyed the vacay & got some mental down-time from all the "demands" of your 40k public. Thanks on the sergeant comments, getting the right tools helps, and it's funny how hearing something described in just the right way can make things "click". I like your scenario for Tranquility... kind of the way I envisioned that as well, which is why their aren't marine snipers throughout the astartes... there must have been something special about Tranquility that not only resulted in the camo but in the need to develop a full marine sniper. Perhaps it was an expeditionary force that got stranded on a hostile world and ended fighting a prolonged gorilla action for years (decades?) before the tides of war allowed the chapter to recover them. Something like that.

Stick to your guns on the wings... we're all waiting with great antici........ pation! (Rocky Horror reference there for you young pups)

@Santobell: Yep, that was back in the days when the game designers still had a slight grasp on reality.

@Gathering Storm: OK GS, sounds good!

@fatty: LOL! Love it! It's stealthy.... in the right environment... at night.... underground.

I'd just like to thank you for all the awsome inspiration you've given me for my Deathwatch Mantis Warrior and marines in general, and for the basing tute that I will be stealing for my Deathwatch too.

Thank you Mr Awsome. The song posted man pages back was so right.

Thanks Grimm, more than happy to be of service. And hope to continue to inspire... but that's easy with so many people contributing their ideas and talents.

The only oother reason or reasons for full marine snipers, is that the radiation would mess with the initiates/ scouts implants (zygotes?) and was rendering them pretty much useless. Only full marines with the full suite of implants and power armour could withstand it. The sniper marines then adopted camo to operate in advance of the mantis main force, as eyes and ears, plus to break the morale of the enemy with surgical strikes and assassinations.

Otherwise the enemy had superior firepower and the only great leveller was to use the sniper rifle for the extended range and killing power.

Sorry if this goes over all the stuff from before or is what gits outlined in the past.

Btw wd 246 poster of the land raider (atleast i think its that 1 or around there) the Imperial Fists repainted their landraiders black with yellow unit marking, in effect reversing their colours, due to fighting on a night world. So SM's in camo are still around (although around 9-10 years ago)

Hey, just found these whilst trawling the interweb:
http://www.maxmini.eu/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=12&products_id=72
(Apologies for off-site link - couldn't embed image)
Potential?

lots of very impressive and immaginative stuff with bags of character as usual . Really like your badab campaign colour scheme. would really like to see a bigger diorama of the planet as well . congrats on you ven dred

inmygravenimage wrote:Hey, just found these whilst trawling the interweb:
http://www.maxmini.eu/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=12&products_id=72
(Apologies for off-site link - couldn't embed image)
Potential?

I saw those graven... I'm not sure. They almost look too "fairy-like" for a space marine. I think it's the pointed ends. Guess I'd have to see them on an actual marine pack to make a final judgement.


@neil101: Thanks! Unfortunately I am no good at building dioramas. Have tried on several occasions for model railroading and I'm just a disaster. I can build tiny diorama's well enough (60mm base or less) but scaling up just doesn't work for me. I was going to make a display base for the squad but that would be the high-plains/tall grass type of base & not really based on the tranquility pattern camo.

jup i recon those wings will look fairy like. look at me i am space a rella and i bring peace in the gelaxy WITH MY BOLTER! DIE!!!! MUHAHAHAHA

Another variation: excuse the standard jump pack:



There's another of these wings, I just blu-tacked it in for the time being. Too fairy-like?

Looks a bit too organic I think, reminds me of the old chaos marines.

Hey Graven, I was just packin' up a pile of stuff to send to you... let me get you that Sanguinary pack & let's see what it's like on a proper framework.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Well, both kids are out of dutch at the moment so we celebrated our day off with a 40k game. It was fun, I put myself at the "suicide" spot in between the opposing armies expecting to get crushed but managed to eek out a win... which isn't actually what I wanted but the boys tied so at least there was no fighting.

After the game, I was putting away my scouts and for the several dozenth time noted how they were kind of a mish-mosh of halfway done figures. So in disgust... I set aside my sternguard and trade figures and took the evening to finish them up. They aren't fancy... crude tabletop at best... but at least I can field them now without feeling too awful about their appearance.

So here's the Mantis Warrior Scout Corps, complete with Darious Stone and a variety of heavy weapons. I love that old autocannon fig, so I use it like a heavy bolter. The scout with the ML is God-awful but it's the only one I've got at the moment so it'll have to do.

nice looking models. after i build my dark eldar coven i will dive into one of these RT era chapters. do you know a old almost forgotten chapter with lots of bikes? not white scars everybody knows them.

I don't recall any bike-centric chapters from back in the day... of course back then then there were actually very few chapters that were fleshed out in any real sense... Ultras, Wolves... couple of others but that's about it. I'd say the world is your oyster! Pick an old chapter and run with it!

did blood angels not have a bikey feel in rt? oh, btw, do you have the rt scout with the shruken catapult? that was cool lol

The power fist scout sarge's arm looks in a really awkward position...

It's a prosthetic... they do that.


....




O.K. I kid... well, sort of. It was a hastily conceived conversion many years ago. Doesn't look that bad in person, kind of a "woo-hoo we won" sort of a pose. I will at some point... build myself a new set of sergeants, but he'll do for now.

reviewed the pages from 56 on...becuase I severly lack the perseverance to read through every note. The covert ork in the mantis gear looks great! i love the idea and the bits went togehter well. I also wanted to pay some recognition to your scouts, as I think they are highly unused by most marine players and its admirable that you have so many in your force. The group photo of them really inspire me to collect them myself! I look foward to someday composing an army list with an all scout troop choice and a few spdr storms. Great work splitta!

Heys Gitz, wow loads to catch up on, first off off great idea with the tranquillity vets how only the servivors where the camo, and how they are not just sternguard but all ranks, that works well i think..

Second with the vanilla codex characters, shrike and kantor are obvious excellent characters but people tend to forget about Cato Sicarius.. now sicarius i use every game and personally think hes the best character in the game he offers the Army as a whole his leadership and can equip a tac squad with 1 of 4 bonus's.. look into him he rocks..

And lastly really great work on the sergeant, its really hard to chop up a marine and put him back together differently but to put one together from different kits well... its hard and you have pulled it off, and GS can really get tricky at times...

Ive got a couple more of my chapter finished will be posting pics tomoz bud, when i say finished i mean actually painted and finished..

Keep up the good work man Jim..

Second from the left back row, nice plastic Scout he's from 2nd Ed right?
They look very nice altogether, my only comment would be that hero Sgt seems to have more shading/highlighting on his armor and stands out a bit
more than the rank and file was this deliberate?

@Element: Don't blame you for not wanting to plod though the whole blog. It's kind of a chatty thing which is why I put the note at the beginning of page 1 directing people to the summary on 56. The bug boy concept just kind of worked considering the person it's intended for (Arakasi and his Dark Angel emulating orks). I was none too sure how it was going to go together... originally I was looking at normal marine parts, but there was no way they were going to look decent on an ork frame, but when I bumped it up to terminator bits it all came together rather nicely. I like my scouts. They're very old figures... only two poses, all metal... but something about the group shot reminds me of the unit photos you sometimes see from WWII. They aren't very well painted... but I at least brought them up to a decent tabletop standard, did the lenses and basing so they should be more-or-less acceptable to field with the newer version of my army.

@jimmy: Thanks! And thanks for the tip on Cato... I'll definitely give him a close look. One of the advantages of doing the MW's out of the vanilla dex is that I've got a lot of options as far as named characters go... so I can experiment using the "counts as" rule to my heart's content. I hope the painting on the sergeant lives up to the build. I'll be looking forward to seeing what you've been working on. Feel free to mention it here when you've got them posted.

@Santobell: All of the scouts (with the exception of the Telion figure) are from a long way back. I'll be honest in saying I don't remember exactly when... but the last edition I played before my break was third, so they are at least that old. That is my "counts as" Telion figure, my scoutmaster Darius Stone. He is a newly painted figure and painted to my character standard using my "new" scheme for MW green, as opposed to the scouts which were painted a long time ago to a much lower standard (though I did a lot of "finishing" work on them lately). Eventually, I may update the green on their shoulder pads to match Stone's... but that's a project that can wait a while.

Is the scout you're talking about the guy with the missile launcher? I think he's the only plastic I have shown... I have about 4 or 5 others like him, one with a heavy bolter. They don't really fit in my scout force, so if you like him/them I'd trade them all to you for a marine for my Deathwatch squad painted in your colors. Just a thought.



Painting progress continues on the sternguard. I've got the first color up done on all 4 figs (my two w/ combi-meltas, Sages plasma & my Kantor fig (which is actually THE Kantor fig). Hope to get through the second round of color ups tonight.

OH.... Big News!! My airbrush arrived yesterday! Wooo-hooo! That opens the door to beginning work on my vehicles. I am breaking with tradition and actually *reading* the instruction manual. I know this puts at risk my status as an American male... but it's too much of an investment and too alien a piece of equipment to just plug in and run with. It even came with a little booklet with some simple things to practice before beginning on anything serious, which I am also reading through. I might fire it up this weekend and start working on the practice exercises... we shall see.

They are quite easy to set up actually. I used to use one to paint (real) guns and knives. Its all about air flow and keeping the correct distance from the thing you are painting. Id practice on some random storage bin lids before moving on to a real project.

fatty wrote:nice looking models. after i build my dark eldar coven i will dive into one of these RT era chapters. do you know a old almost forgotten chapter with lots of bikes? not white scars everybody knows them.

None of the Badab War chapters are particularly noted for being full of bikers, but most of them could work. The Raptors seem to be an obvious choice. The Fire Hawks are noted as being headstrong and preferring shock tactics, which fit bikers perfectly. If you're particularly brave, Minotaur Bikers would be another great choice. I'm going to be doing Lamenters bikers myself, although not set during the Badab War.

If you have a friend with IA9, borrow it and read about the chapters. The rules in it might be terrible but the fluff is good.

Why on earth would you paint a real gun or knife with an air brush?