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Guess nobody cares about Tau snipers, lol.

How about Steel Legion Ogryns?



I was excited to do some Ogryns. The new kit looked great, and looked like it had a ton of options.

Wrong!

The kit is a beautiful mess. The Ogryns are wonderfully sculpted, but each individual Ogryn is letter coded A, B and C, and will only fit together "properly" if you stick to the correspondingly lettered parts. Look at the outside of the box. What you see is what your ogryns will look like if you assemble them properly.

As if. We're doing these guys my way.

I'd always intended to cut off the hanging tank treads because I think they look silly. Turns out it wasn't an option. They'll only fit on the model if you use the Bullgryn arms. So I mixed and matched the arms to get poses I liked. This leaves all kinds of putty-filled gaps, but such is the price of freedom.

I was able to get two vicious-looking Ogryns with their weapons leveled to lay waste to some unlucky heretics or xeno-scum. But that left me with one more Ogryn to assemble and the two least desirable arms, lol. I'm thinking I may bite the bullet and buy another arm for this guy (one of the power mauls). But in the mean time, I swapped the ripper gun to his left hand and gave him one of the Ork choppas as a knife. "Dat's not a nife. Dis is a nife!"

Here's the Bone 'Ead. I made sure he was the tallest of the bunch. Next to one of the tallest of my Space Marines.



Then I realized that while I had saved a bunch of money by purchasing the Ogryns in bits (only buying the parts I needed), I had no bases for them. So these two beat up a Crisis Suit and stole his (already broken) flight stand base.



As a group.


Honestly I kinda want to do some more of these guys. There's something about Ogryns I really like. And something I really like about Steel Legion Ogryns. I would even do them up as really expensive props. Just to have them loading cargo or hauling off prisoners or something.

Man Sarge, your work to convert everything is AWESOME! Love the new Ogryns and the poses you gave them. As for the Tau snipers, they look great. You got the Sniper team look down pat on them. Now paint them up and base them. Hell paint something up or the GRAY TIDE will get to you.

Tau look like Tau. Don't really know enough about them to say more. Guess that is a good thing though, they still look like they could be intended poses. Speaks highly of the modifications.

I agree the tank treads are silly. Seems very Orkish to me. Your solution is better.

One of the problems with tau FWs and Crisis suits is that they are pretty old models, never been updated AFAIK.

 whalemusic360 wrote:
Tau look like Tau.

I guess that's fairly true, lol. The Pathfinder snipers are really the only Tau unit I've really been pleased with.

I agree the tank treads are silly.

Just seemed like dangling tank treads are a good way to get whacked in your Ogryn junk.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
One of the problems with tau FWs and Crisis suits is that they are pretty old models, never been updated AFAIK.

Absolutely. Though I really feel like the Crisis suits had so much more potential that was wasted by a poor kit design. While I think my disappointment with the Fire Warriors stems from just how versatile the Space Marines kit is. The Chaos Marines kit is old, but you can get a lot out of it with some work. Its only problem is being hideously ugly, with parts I hate like giant horned helmets and belt-fed bolters (you'd need three arms to load it properly on the fly, lol. Which might not always be a problem for Chaos Marines, all of the ones in the kit are two-armed).

Like your work matey !
The Ogryns and orcs look spot on to me , even the "head up " orks !
Why Tau tho ? Gotta be better things to spend time on than them ?

Why Tau?

Gotta have something for my heroic Spess Mahreens and Guardsmen to kill.

Plus, honestly I hadn't had any inspiration to make more Marines for months. They're a lot of work, which usually leaves my fingers and back sore at the end, and I have one or maybe two figures to show for it, lol. The relatively "low" effort of converting the Orks and Tau has been somewhat refreshing, heh. There's a bit more "cleanup" needed for them in terms of putty, but that's ridiculously easy compared to cutting and filing card sections down. Like I've said, and it's no joke, the Space Marines are literally about 40 parts each, about 34 of which are modified in some way. A Tactical Marine with a bolter consists of: 7-8 parts for the arms, 3 for the bolters, 11 parts for the legs, 5-6 for the torsos, head, pack, knife, 2 pauldrons, 8 individual accessory parts. I split all the pouches and grenades apart so they sit on the madel better, etc.



And I've always loved the Orks and wanted to do my own take on them. I just need to stop buying them. It too easy to get good deals on EBay, lol. I have more Orks than I'll probably need at this point.

Eventually I will get back to my Space Marines. I was working on a long-overdue Apothecary before I packed them up. Had been modifying the Narthecium to be a bit more practical looking. I want to do 2 or 3 Apothecary models in the long run. But I want them to look like Marines first, and medics second, and the base models don't really do that very well.

Slight problem for you...

If your making everything to trustable, how are you going to solve the tau problem? By that I mean the sizing for races are as follows:

Tau 4'5
Guard 5'10
Eldar 7'
Space marines 8'

These are average sizes mind, but racial sizes non the less.

Have you considered shortening tau at all, if so how?

Tau aren't supposed to be that short, just slightly shorter (5'6" compared to 6'). And I don't think that fluff is even in any of the more recent books.

Man gotta also love that GW shortened the SM again to 7 feet

I think that those scales, the difference between 1feet is gonna be fairly hard to see anyway.

I see that putting the 1.5 mm card in at the waist has the added advantage of allowing adequate space for pistols and pouches, knives etc. I find the waist / belt on an unmodified marine isn't deep enough I end up having to file down some of the bigger pieces of equipment to make them fit.

Like I've mentioned before, I work on the Jes Goodwin school of Space Marine heights. So 7-7.5ft. I'm not a huge fan of some of the Black Library authors' insistence on growing these guys. It silly, and worse, impractical, for them to be too much bigger.

https://veteransergeant.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/how-tall-is-a-space-marine/



I feel my scale captures this fairly well, leaving them just over a head taller than the average man. And it keeps them in proper proportions. Bulkier, but with the correct length legs and arms

I see that putting the 1.5 mm card in at the waist has the added advantage of allowing adequate space for pistols and pouches, knives etc. I find the waist / belt on an unmodified marine isn't deep enough I end up having to file down some of the bigger pieces of equipment to make them fit.

Absolutely. A millimeter goes a long way at this scale, lol. I file the magazine pouches down slightly too though. Mostly to give them a more rounded and organic feel.

As far as shortening the Tau, lol, no. Not going to happen. I don't know where your 4.5' number comes from anyway. I've never seen that. Just that they're slightly smaller and slighter than the average man. I feel like the basic model captures that well enough. I'll put one next to Mr. Cadian when I get a chance and show the scale comparison.

 Desubot wrote:
Man gotta also love that GW shortened the SM again to 7 feet

I think that those scales, the difference between 1feet is gonna be fairly hard to see anyway.

GW's marketing/promotions/beancounter department did - for the sake of this one contest!

Other than that, I think we're safe to go with Marines in Armor that are 2.5 meters +!

I don't go anywhere near as I depth as you veteran sergeant , but buy adding a mil or two at the waist I get a pleasing bit of height and leave enough room for pouches and sidearms. I split all the mags and grenades and file them so they sit naturally. Removing some of the belt often helps too. Marines are as small as my eyes can comfortably work with these days ! I have a big bag of parts ready for a Chaos marine fest coming in the summer !
Good look with the Tau !

I love the Tau Snipers, and what you've done with the Ogryns
It's a shame that a lot GW kits seem to be heading in this direction, where you have to build them one way.

Doesn't stop us from cutting them up and building them how we want, it just makes it a little trickier,
and harder for people to get into converting, which is my favorite part of the hobby.

I've been following this blog on again and off again for some time now. I love all the work you put into these guys. Amazing stuff!

Sarge I don't know if you're aware of the excellent gun mods / belt accessories stocked by Anvil Industries. http://www.anvilindustry.co.uk/The-Armoury/Ammo Some superb stuff there like foregrips, reflex sights, under-barrel grenade launchers and bandoliers. Also their ammo pouches are smaller in scale than the GW ones, and easier to fit comfortably on a marine. They've saved me days of scratch building.

I've looked at Anvil before but I don't feel like they have anything ideal for my project, to be honest. I don't like exposed rounds at 28mm, because ultimately they end up oversized. And a lot of their other stuff looks too modern. If I do scouts I might use their foregrips to make cut down shorty bolters.

 SNxWMxN wrote:
I've been following this blog on again and off again for some time now. I love all the work you put into these guys. Amazing stuff!

Thanks. I'm glad you liked it and I'm honored to be 1/6th of your total posts.

Realized I'd never shared my blades on the forum. I wanted to give the Marines more of a classic Roman feel. The shorter gladius-style blade means I can have Sergeants without having the giant melee weapons, and the knives, while fine, are a bit more machete-like, and I thought I could have fun replacing them.


Based on this:


The gladius-sized weapon used a High Elf Archer Command blade. The smaller pugio/mini-gladius uses the speartip from High Elf Spearmen mated to the Space Marine knife hilt, with the handle shifted over to the center of the weapon.

A lot of work for something that just gets left on the Marine's back on most models, lol. But I recently got another big bag of those High Elf spears for super cheap.

Seems like almost *everything* is better in Steel Legion flavor.

The tau and Orks look good too. I can't really do GW orks, the hunchiness is unpalatable. Your work makes them a bit easier to handle, though I don't think I could get myself to do the same thing. I'd sooner buy a bunch of Deadzone Marauder commandos than convert like you are, but that seems to be your thing and you're damn good at it so keep it up

It's actually not that bad really. Though if you had to do a hundred or so for a full sized Ork army it might get tiresome, lol. I'm only doing like 500 points worth.

But the legs cut real easily. Then it's just a matter of rotating the groin so the legs stand taller, then filing down the excess and using a bit of putty/liquid green stuff to fill the gaps. The head needs a bit more work.

I do like the Maruaders from Mantic. I actually ordered a few. But they're not prevalent on Ebay, which makes them a larger monetary investment than GW Orks which can be gotten on Ebay for cheap in bulk (I think I pay about $1.50 average per boy) if you're patient and look for deals. My problem is I look too hard for deals, and then I end up with more stuff than I need, heh. The Mantic models, even though I snagged a decent deal on them, cost almost twice that just because there aren't a bajillion of them in circulation like the GW orks.

As soon as my Marauders show up I'll post a size comparison.

Sweet, that would be interesting. I'm really crossing my fingers for a good hard plastic Marauder kit once Warpath hits kickstarter... someday. Or maybe even in the next Deadzone kickstarter.. though that's been held back too (not really a bad thing).

I guess one thing to be said for marauders is that they're made of restic and have limited poses. And cutting restic is both difficult and dangerous lol, if you haven't dealt with it before you probably won't like it given how much you tend to hack and saw things! If you've ever changed a pose on a metal model... more like that.

Yeah, I did some metal model conversions back in the old, old days. It's time consuming and hard work, for sure. I only ever did it on character models. I'm guessing I won't do much to the Marauder models other than to 40Kify them a little so they blend in. I was just kind of curious to see them.

Having extra ork arms around may let you do some reasonable converting, it's just that they have kind of military skirt/tunic things so it'll be hard to do much changing of the legs... Although you do have a convenient skirt/tunic thing to cover/hide certain changes in leg position...

At least they aren't horribly hunched over, they've kind of got the whole 'neck sticks out of torso at slightly better than a right angle (instead of up =/) but they work it.

 Big H wrote:
Like your work matey !
The Ogryns and orcs look spot on to me , even the "head up " orks !
Why Tau tho ? Gotta be better things to spend time on than them ?

because they're an awesome army?

 GrimDork wrote:
Having extra ork arms around may let you do some reasonable converting, it's just that they have kind of military skirt/tunic things so it'll be hard to do much changing of the legs... Although you do have a convenient skirt/tunic thing to cover/hide certain changes in leg position...

At least they aren't horribly hunched over, they've kind of got the whole 'neck sticks out of torso at slightly better than a right angle (instead of up =/) but they work it.

I actually kinda like the tunic thing. I have some extra AoBR bodies sitting around I don't plan to use (they came in a lot I picked up on EBay) I can cut the legs off if the Marauder legs look too spindly. Then I can just trim them down to the right length and glue them on.

I've been plugging away at some more Orks. Up to 30 finished now, though I took a week and a half off because work was busy. Still trying to convince myself to drop another $40-50 on those Kromlech heads, but haven't been successful yet, lol.

Honestly, I'm curious about how you'd approach
'modernizing' a Tau battlesuit - I think something Farsight Enclaves would be right up your alley (and would make good enemies for your Orks )

I haven't given much thought to the Battlesuits aside from giving them proper hands and more dynamic arms. I was a fan of Heavy Gear when I was much younger, and always thought the Tau suits would be so much cooler if they went that direction. I have three of them (including the one I posted before). Two need some TLC and restoration, but hopefully I can make something out of them. After that, I'll probably pick up a Commander and a Broadside, and that will be about it for me for Tau. I've already got stealth suits, FW, Pathfinders and Kroot. The finecast/metal Kroot stuff goes for too much money to justify the cost (which is sad because I kinda like the kroothounds).

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 GrimDork wrote:
Having extra ork arms around may let you do some reasonable converting, it's just that they have kind of military skirt/tunic things so it'll be hard to do much changing of the legs... Although you do have a convenient skirt/tunic thing to cover/hide certain changes in leg position...

At least they aren't horribly hunched over, they've kind of got the whole 'neck sticks out of torso at slightly better than a right angle (instead of up =/) but they work it.

I actually kinda like the tunic thing. I have some extra AoBR bodies sitting around I don't plan to use (they came in a lot I picked up on EBay) I can cut the legs off if the Marauder legs look too spindly. Then I can just trim them down to the right length and glue them on.

I've been plugging away at some more Orks. Up to 30 finished now, though I took a week and a half off because work was busy. Still trying to convince myself to drop another $40-50 on those Kromlech heads, but haven't been successful yet, lol.

Sadly, they're runts. Even next to the shortest of my Orks. And absolutely dwarfed by the bigger/taller ones.



I got a pretty good deal on them. Maybe I'll just toss them back up on Ebay for what I paid. I wanted to use them but they're pretty glaringly off/

Oh my.




Brings my collection to about 30 of these guys, all unassembled. So what if I already have like 250 IGuard troopers between my Steel Legion and metal Cadians?

Awesome stuff, as always. Thanks for posting the great image showing how you have "Tru-Scaled" them up! Very helpful!