Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi everyone, I've received a lot of feedback on my Genestealer Cult (article here), and I appreciate all the kind comments. But as I said in the article, the GT army was really only the beginning. Since my critical mass of Hybrids (Boyz) are done, I can now have fun exploring some different looks and army builds.

So here's my blog for phase two. The main push of this second phase is to mechanize the army. A vehicle-borne militia army was what I originally envisioned for my GCult, and in playtesting I've found I really enjoy how the army plays mounted up.

I haven't done a huge amount of work on the army since last winter, but I've moved ahead on some projects I needed to complete with the mech build in mind. BTW, I apologize in advance for so-so pics. I need to get some better lighting and do some camera tweaks.

First up is a pic of a new Acolyte (Nob). Since I'm splitting up my footslogging sluggas into smaller units to be truck-mounted, I need some additional unit leaders.



Here's an example of the new rokkit turrets for my existing buggies. It's just a simple repurposing of a Terminator cyclone missile launcher.



I also did some work on my existing Hybrids. I'm going to field some of my formerly footslogging slugga Hybrids as 'Ard Boyz. To model the extra armor, I added riot shields stolen from the local Arbites and decorated with various friendly slogans like "brotherhood," "peace," etc. They were an easy plasticard build.



I've gotten some comments that my shoota Boyz could use some differentiation on the tabletop. I don't think traditional unit markings would really work for these guys, so I decided to take a different approach. My idea was to theme each of my shoota Hybrids/Boyz units. I settled on two quasi-religious images -- bells and books.

The first pic shows the bells theme. I think of them as heralds of the new order. The second pic shows the books theme. I imagine them as apostles reading from their holy scriptures even as they cut down unbelievers.





I'll continue theming these units as time allows, but I think this is a good start.

Next up, I start working on new vehicles.

Absolutely stunning just as before. Can't wait to see more.

Looking great man! Love the colourscheme you used!

Genestealer Hybrid army looks cool did you use the Plastic ones from the Genestealer supplement of Space Hulk???

I love what you did with the army before, I can't wait to see where you go from here! And I really like the theme squads- it is a striking way to seperate out units. You continue to raise the bar for all us wannabe genestealer cult converters.

gorgon wrote:
First up is a pic of a new Acolyte (Nob). Since I'm splitting up my footslogging sluggas into smaller units to be truck-mounted, I need some additional unit leaders.

I think this guy is brilliant. I really like the amount of detail that you painted on his "face" and tentacles. He's like Dr. Zoidberg's delightfully creepy cousin.

Gorgon,

I'm loving the new additions for the army! Pity there'll be no Baltimore GT for you to take 'em to this year! I love the bell theme as well. A great unifying concept for the army and a nice break from the "usual".

Great stuff as always!!

Oh, and if you're thinking "trucks", I'd definitely swing by Dave Taylor's blog. He's done some freakin' amazing scratch-build Adeptus Munitorum trucks with Thomas Wynn. Very, very nice stuff IMNSHO.

Vale,

JohnS

I simply cannot WAIT to see the trucks you build! Will you be convetring Ork trukks, or do you have something else in mind?

And have you considered Battlewagons, since you'll be doing a lot of work on the transports regardless?

Thanks for the kind words, everyone!

@Boss: Nope, all the Hybrids in my army are metal. I got most of them at a pretty good price, all things considered, but my wallet still aches.

@Cygnnus: Yeah, I'm keeping an eye on Dave's stuff. What I'm shooting for with my trucks is something in between his and the base Ork model. I want mine a bit ramshackle, just not quite as ramshackle as the base kit. I didn't know Tom was involved with those trucks.

And yeah, I probably won't be fielding these guys for a while at any major tournies. :( The Mechanicon tourney is nearby and should be a good one, but since my clubmates are running it, it looks like I'll be paint judging and not playing, lol. I might play in the Friday event, though, once that's finalized.

@Savnock: Yep, I'll convert Ork Trukks. And there will be Battlewagons. I'll get into that in my next entry later today.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
So now it's vehicle time. The mechanized army I've planned will require the following new items:

Rocket (Rokkit) Buggy
2-3 Trucks (Trukks)
3-4 APCs (Battlewagons)
Flamer Hybrid unit (Burnas)

The Trucks will be converted from the Ork Trukk kit, while the Battlewagons will be converted from the IG Chimera kit. As much as I love them, my existing GCult Leman Russes (which I formerly ran as gun platform Battlewagons) won't be part of this new army composition, and will probably be designated for Looted Wagon duty when I get the urge to field them.

I plan to do prototypes for the Trukks and Battlewagons, then go back and build the remaining vehicles after I've presumably learned a few lessons the hard way.

But first up is a new Buggy to complete my squadron of three. My Buggies are built from Space Marine Land Speeders. The first step after doing the usual prep work on the two hull sections is to trim off the wings and any Imperial iconography. I also shortened the bumper to give it more of a land vehicle look, and added plasticard covering the vents over the cockpit (this will become more apparent after the top and bottom are glued together).



The driver and gunner will be painted separately and added later after the Buggy is painted. Note that I don't do any major work on the riders' legs, other than some trimming down of the knee area. That's because the legs won't be visible after I build the rest of the cockpit and add the torsos and arms with controls and targeting mechanisms.

The next step is to add the chassis stuff underneath. I just build up some support structure using square plastic rod and plasticard. For now, I won't add much in terms of realistic detail like fuel tanks, etc., although I have an itch to go back and add some of that stuff to all three buggies later.





I'm definitely just a ham-and-egger when it comes to plasticard work, but hopefully will illustrate that you don't have to be a plastics expert or do anything complicated to get a good result in your converting. The nice thing about this army is that if something looks a little crude, it kind of fits the theme.

Nice work

The Buggy is starting to shape up now. I added the side panels, which serve two purposes. First, they help enclose the cockpit area. Second, they cover the seam where the two hull sections meet.

The axles were built from plastic rod and plastic tube (rod fitting snugly inside the tube). I kept them extra-long for now. IMO, it's better do that and trim them down carefully than to measure for a precise fit now and risk accidentally making them too short and discovering it when you're ready to mount the wheels. Ripping off welded plastic parts is a PITA.

I also added the turret mount, rear wheel guards and "lights" above the cockpit where the vent was.







Usually my projects move painfully slowly due to my sometimes difficult schedule. But this one is moving along nicely. It doesn't hurt that I'm getting some modeling time in while watching the Stanley Cup finals. Go Pens!

I still need to add the communications array and tires, and model up the turret and riders. After that, I'll do some cleanup and it should be ready to go.

I like these, nice conversions.

(Some close up pics would probably help.)

Okay, after a vacation and some time basking in the glow of the Pittsburgh Penguins' Stanley Cup victory, I'm back to blogging. Since I last posted, I put the finishing touches on the buggy.

As you can see, I added the rokkit pods and tires. I also modeled up the driver and gunner. They're just blu-tacked in place for now, as they'll be painted separately then glued in place. I used Sentinel control bits for the driver's steering mechanism, and cobbled together a targeting mechanism for the gunner out of a speeder bit and some plastic.








So now I have a full squadron of three buggies. I know people probably want to see it painted up, but I'm planning on modeling all my needed vehicles first and then use an airbrush to paint the base coat on all of them in one fell swoop. Plus that way I can use my vehicles in games in the meantime instead of having to do proxies.

With that project out of the way, now it's on to the truck prototype.

I'd already been planning to modify Ork Trukks to make my transports when I came across Dave Taylor's and Thomas Wynn's awesome Imperial truck conversion. There are definitely ideas there I'm going to borrow. However, to fit my army's look, I'm shooting for something more civilized than the Ork Trukk but more ramshackle than the Imperial conversion. I have a pretty clear idea what I want to do with the truck bed, but the cab section will likely take some thinking and some work to get right.

Here's the assembled truck chassis. So far, it looks like your basic Ork Trukk. I'll get into how I'm changing the truck bed in the next update.

UPDATE!!!!! cant wait! looks sweet!

Looks great I'm doing the same for my guard support vehicles!

I'm looking forward to seeing your take on this one mate. Lots of great opportunities with that frame!

Cheers
Dave

Okay, it's been a loooong time since my last update. But I've been working on the trucks (albeit slowly). Over the next day or so, I'll bring everything up to date. Which brings us to the bed section.

As I said, I want this truck to be a little less ramshackle than the Orky version. Rather than build a new bed from scratch, I decided to alter the existing one since there were elements I really liked. The first step was to create a new bed liner from some ridged plasticard. Fitting it involved a lot of trial and error and was a pain in the butt, but I like the final result.



Next, I added plasticard on the outside bed walls (again, to de-ramshackle things), and created a back wall. The second pic below shows the bed resting on the chassis and some of the detail I added to the rear.





The next steps included adding sideboards and benches using square plastic rod and wood strips. I also added a (yet again, less ramshackle) roll bar to the bed. To create the roll bar, I just took some plastic rod and bent it after heating. Be careful if you're doing this over a candle or something. Styrene will melt very quickly. I used hot water, which is slower but less likely to drip plastic on something valuable.

Here's the two WIP trucks. I'm actually doing two of them simultaneously in an attempt to save time (that didn't really work).



With the bed finished, now I had to ponder how to do the cab section. After a lot of pondering, I decided to duplicate elements of Dave Taylor's and Thomas Wynn's awesome Imperial Truck conversion, but add some different touches of my own, particularly in the engine area. I wanted to do more of an angled front with heavy duty headlights sitting on the front fenders. Also, the gunner will have a shoulder-mounted weapon (that RPG-style Steel Legion missile launcher serving as a rokkit) instead of a fixed emplacement to give it more of a militia feel.

Here you can see the installed rear cab wall, the wall separating the driver and gunner, and some of the engine wall sections.



In this pic you can see the enclosed driver's section, the door and windshield all taking shape.



More to come shortly...

I'm loving this phase 2 work! By far the standout for me is the "de-ramshackling" of the ork trukk kit. Really great stuff there, I know I'll be following this log closely. Kudos!

one word , MINT !

Thanks for the comments, folks.

An important point I should add is that I made patterns as I went along for a number of the plasticard pieces. That way, when I build another truck (which I will likely need to do) it shouldn't be as big of a hassle with fitting, etc.

So here's the boxed-in front end. You can see I left the big blower exposed...I just like that look. The hood has an angle to it, in contrast with the Taylor-Wynn Durango. The front grill is also in place.



I seem to lack more build pics, so I'll show pics of the finished product and talk through them.

The pic below shows the finished front end, with headlights installed. The headlights are the old conical Imperial searchlights, with the pointy part chopped off and Procreate added to create a rounded back.

You can also see the magents mounted under that frame section protruding from the bumper. That's where the ram will mount.



Here's the ram with magnets in place. I find the reroll in difficult terrain to be invaluable, so my army never leaves cult HQ without the rams. Still, rules or my mind may change in the future, so I wanted to have the flexibility to remove them.

The ram bitz are the old Imperial version. They're a little smaller and thus a better fit for my trucks.



Here you can see a closeup of the cab area and the roll bar. What's that on the roll bar? Skulls?!? In the 41st millenium?!? Poppycock!!!

Actually, part of the fluff for my army is that the cult venerates the skulls of previous generations -- human, hybrid and purestrain. So they like to mount skulls of fallen cultists on their vehicles and have their ancestors accompany them into battle. I used Procreate to lengthen and "hybridize" some of the skulls, as you can see.

Getting back to the cab area, I added diamond plate plasticard (extra armoring for the gunner) and bitz to the gunner's cupola. The gunner models will be on magnetized bases so that they stay snugly in the cupola. You can also see some of the rivets I added. Those were done the hard way, with me cutting tiny pieces off extremely small plastic rod. With a pair of good tweezers,it's actually not all that hard or time-consuming.

In case anyone is wondering, the meshy windshield is just some replacement window screen backed by some thin plasticard.



And ta-da! Here are the finished trucks (except for the gunners) with rams and boarding planks in place. I'm pretty happy with the overall result, even if they took a lot longer than I expected. I think they fit my vision of something in between the base Ork kit and the Taylor F-150.

Some of the joins might look a little sloppy in the pics. Hey, not all of us have access to a laser cutter (*cough, cough*). But I did lots of filing and filling, and rest assured the trucks should "clean up" very nicely when they're primed. They just don't look pretty right now.

The trucks will receive plenty of weathering to demonstrate how hard they've been run and used. But I'm saving the painting for later, when I can basecoat all my new vehicles in one go. (Sorry folks, I know that's not very exciting, but it's going to be the easiest path forward.)



In case anyone's interested, here's the boarding plank. It's a simple strip of metal, with a strip of diamond plate plasticard glued on top. The inside bars help stablize the plank when mounted.



Finished right side (sans planks and ram):



Finished right side (sans planks and ram):



Because I need and deserve a break from vehicles and plasticard, I'm going to switch things up. When armybuilding I recommend a change of pace whenever you think you need one. You want to be able to keep your enthusiasm level up and not get burnt out.

Anyway, as I've played and tested the army more, I've fallen in love with the performance of Nobz squads. Who wouldn't, right...they're the Scarlett Johanssen of the codex. The best counts-as fit for Nobz are probably Purestrain Genestealers. Previously, I fielded a bunch of Purestrains as Kommandos, which worked well. But with some some work, I think I can alter some existing models to give them more of a Nobz feel and be 100% WYSIWYG.

Unfortunately, I'm having camera problems, and it'll probably be a week or two until I get them sorted out. So there'll be a short delay until my next posting. By then, I may have the Nobz completed, so I'll just show pics of the finished models and talk you through what I did.

Great stuff here.

No, really great. It's always impressive and inspiring to see imaginative, well-crafted conversions.

Getting a look "under the hood," and following you as you break things down step by step, is what I really appreciate, though.

Seriously, thanks for the knowledge.

I love what you did with the landspeeders and buggies... I never would have thought of that. The trukk cleaned up nicely, too.

Very nice trukks, your plasticard fu is high.

Looking good gorgon!

Another great take on varying the Ork trukk. These will be just perfect for your army!

Cheers
Dave

Good to see you back to work. As always top notch work, Great Job.

Love seeing the continuation of this project. The trukks look amazing and can hardly wait to see what you do for the Nobz.

- Blackbone

Well...another delay. Much of my hobby time in October went into helping launch The Mechanicon GT (www.themechanicon.com), which was a worthy distraction. Things came off well, especially with it being the inaugural event, and our club hopes to make it bigger and better next year.

I did get some personal work done, however. Below are some pics of my new Purestrains, which count as Nobz. My pics are still coming out puzzlingly dark, which is strange because I'd set up more than enough lighting for these. All signs point to a new camera for Christmas, methinks.

Anyway, to keep these WYSIWYG, I made some minor alterations to the regular Purestrain models. First, they received shoulder plates to represent the 'eavy armor. Next, the addition of spinefists took care of the sluggas. And finally, some flesh hooks (they're a little hard to see in the pics but they're there) reps their stikkbombz. These four look identical because I gave them the same equipment. I'm not playing a lot of wound allocation tricks with this unit because it starts to become a real counts-as stretch for some of the equipment.





I made slightly more significant alterations to the three more unique Nobz in the unit. Going from left to right in the pic below, the first Purestrain received a power klaw and a Waaagh banner, which I repped with a skull juju stick thing in his lower right hand. I'll have to take another pic of that one at some point, because I like how the stick came out. I stacked human skulls, Genestealer skulls and Hybrid skulls (built from human skulls elongated with Procreate). After finishing all the bone work, I added painted decorations to the skulls, in line with the fluff that my cult venerates the skulls of their ancestors. You'll see more of this when I paint my Trukks.



The middle model is one of the Acolytes that seem to be one of the more popular parts of my army with other hobbyists. Unlike my previous Acolytes, I built this one from plastic parts. The basic body is a Plague Monk. I gave it some boots and an arm from a Cadian trooper, a klaw from the Daemonette kit, and of course the tendril head from the Genestealer kit. You can barely see the tome he's carrying on his back. The tomes, scrolls and other holy scriptures carried by the Acolytes are what counts as bosspoles in my army. It was a simple build, and it's good to know I can spam these guys out of plastic if I need to down the road.

The third Purestrain counts as the Painboy. I used the implant attack head to represent his dok's tools, with the idea being that's how it injects Tyranid phage cells, proteins, etc. into wounded cult members. I also added a barbed, poisoned tail (it's kind of curled underneath) to represent his 'urty syringe.

Pretty basic stuff overall, but I think it achieved my goal of making the unit WYSIWYG (in a counts-as sense) while staying within the Genestealer look and feel. So now that they're kosher, my clubmates can no longer complain as they cut a bloody swathe through their armies. HA HA!

I've already started work on my Battlewagon prototype. I'll have some in-progress pics up in a day or two.

Nice. I really like the excellent paint scheme, especially the color choices!

Great convertions and ideas.

Great convertions and ideas.