As I have a 3000+
IG and a 2000+ eldar army, I wanted to do somathing else - a fully converted army, that doesnt matter how slow proceeeds, cause I can play with others.
If sombody grinds his teeth because of my english just proceed to the pics, for the others the background story:
I quite like the
40k books, and I read Graham McNeils' Ultramarine books, and one thing gipped me: when Uriel joined an oucast
SM warband. This army is about a familiar thing: outcast marines from different chapters but still loyal, working together to do the Emperors work.
I tought about it how would that go fluffwise, they could certainly acquire soma low tech stuff like rhinos and its variants, some bikes and maybe even soma land speeders. Whwt dey wouldt have is land raiders and terminator armours (maybe 1 or 2 for the equivalent for company/chapter masters). I think they couldnt fix evrithing properly, so in modelling that means lots of battle damage, jury rigged stuff and unique repairs and mods.
As they are not a real chapter, everyone wears his own colours (and maybe more, I want to do some conversions with looted armour and stripped aroum - if the marine couldt bear the shame for leaving his chapter), instead to mark the warband/brotherhood they wear a medal (not all of them yet) the fist and the wings (pretty sipmle, the fist for the brotherhood and the wings for the imperium, but it's the best I could come up with).
My skills in painting and converting leave much room in improvement, but it will be long before is finish this project. Many of the conversions in not perfect, I regularly forget the elbow protector piece of armour for example, maybe I will go back to theese pieces, maybe not, depends how the whole project goes. The paintings are the same, I just lern the techniques, and in many placec they are not even ready (like chapter symbols, gloss varnishing blood and goo etc) but I felt they are ready to go to a blog :-)
My main goal with conversons is getting rid of
GW-favourite s "I want to go to the toilet" marine stance, so get the models do something: if they stand or walk or run, but properly, not
GW-ish, and to get them in motion not with their feet, but with the whole body. The other thing that want to make them moresteampunk/grimdark - what can I say, I like to be a fluffbunny :-)
So without further delay, here are the pics so far...
First the beginnings of a tactical squad:
- Ultramarine, minimal modding, the strange thing is that the hardest thing was to make him stand straight,
SM models werent designed to do that...
- Sons of Orar, I wanted to go with many Ultramarine successors, some ornament on the leg armor, I
de-cornered the shoulder pad, and some battle damage on the power pack.
- Novamarine, I failed a conversion on a legs, but it looked like in matrix so i kept it, I gave him hands to complete the matrix look and some ornamentation on the shouder pad
- Raptors old and new pattern - when I started to do the project the Raptors looked like in the first pic, the it changed with the Iperial Armour book, but I kept both of them, its like an inside joke :-P
Tried some battle damage with wires hanging from the arour, not sure I like it, but kept it anyway, made from macragge sgt if I recall correctly. I like theese uniqe models, but like to convert them so they are not just another macragge sgt, instead a
tac marine
The new Raptor, lost his eyes, fortunately the apothecary could help wits some battlefield quick fix attaching a servo skull to connect the bolters targeter and the servo skulls' optics directly to the marines neural system:
- Eagle warrior, nothing special, bit work on the legs to get a walking feeling and there's a classik polcice thing when they hold the pistol in one hand, and the flashlight in the other in the way to stabilize the shooting hand. I wanted to do something like that, just with an auspex to get more
40k feeling.
- Iron Hand, with extended comms equipment, and some broken armor on the hand. I felt fitting fluffwise to give him an ornate bolter. For bases I started with micro art's tech bases, but for most i made them myself (not big stuff but better than another army with sand/grass basing
imho)
- Imperial Harbringers, some running motion (not perfect) with some armour ornamentation. As I watch it i see I have to work on the plasma thingies...
- Angels of Absolution, it was my friends idea, and I liked it very much: the marine ran dry on the bolter, so he's swithching to the pistol. I know the bolter shells are far from perfect, but they're the best I could manage
- Angels of Fire, some mouth grille, some posing and some flames (I had to make them from putty cause otherwise I could never paint them with freehand...)
And some more marines:
- Two
ML marines, one Son of Guilliman and from the "I forgot what I wanted to do wit him" chapter, I just call him hte Green Marine (I will come up with some chapeter for him in time...)
- Lamenter, banner bearer, the banner is from some old
BA honour guard, i dont have the courage to do the freehand on the banner...
- A Black Templar champion, some puttying onthe armour and legs but basically just some
BT bitz thrown together
- Tho sergeants or something like that:
An Iron Hand, some
IH bitz with a sentinel chainsword
Scythes of the Emperor, with puttyed shoulder pad and a striking scorpions biting blade
- And the last of them yet: will be some high ranking marine, A Celestial Lion with magnetised weapons, made from the black reach captain
And the two wehicles I nearly finished a Dark Angels
LS and an Ultramarine
LS:
I would like to get your opinions on the conversions/painting and the more important thing: I would like to get ideas for futura conversion:nice armour ornamentations, movement/stance that would look good, wehicle conversion ideas etc. I especially would like to get ideas on chapter specific conversions, how to make the "act" like they came from their chapters (just some basic things that came to my head: long fangs, salamanders with melta/flamer, lighning claw raven guard, ultramarines with tyranid trophies and so on.)
If you have constructive criticism, just lay it on me, I like them :-)
Oh, and I want giwe a name to them if you have an idea...
