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oo, Badger looks dope! What kit is that even? A kitbash?

its built from the mantic games 'veer myn' tunneller model, see here:

https://www.manticgames.com/firefight/veer-myn/tunneller/

Of course, theres the addition of some bits with aquillas (from the valk missile pods) on the sides and an aquilla in the slot on the back made sure that there were no sugestions of divided loyalties.
The basic kit has a great second edition 40k feel to it. a certain 'je ne sais quoi' like the same level of detail as the classic chimera and russ sets of the time, not to mention the classic rhino variants.
As the weapons that came with it are designed for skaven like critters, they are rather absurd looking. as such they were a no go.
you can see I instead added a melta, the one from the new primaris speeder, purely because it has three barrels, making it seem like it blongs on the model.
It just needed inverting and the original topsight clipping off and a new one added on the new top edge. (formerly the bottom)

A few things to mention should you get one: the model goes together insanely easy. it practically clips together but I'd advise glue tbh.
however worth mentioning that the drills and the front 'plough' blades are made of pvc not styrene, requiring superglue not plastic cement there.

Back to Rynns world with a vengeance!

"With greater power comes greater responsibilities...
We cannot sit in satisfaction of our petty victories any longer.
The liberation of our homeworld is but an empty gesture, the scouring of the greenskin hoards a pointless act, the very salvation of the Crimson Fist geneseed a hollow and meaningless deed, if we allow the same fate to come to others.
I had a vision that was victory on Rynnsworld. This is not it.
No brothers. not victory at all.
Not until we all stand together as sons of Dorn and say in one voice; we will not rest our laurels whilst others are beset alone in the darkness.
We will not suffer the alien to walk where he may choose, seeking worlds he may devour at will.
not while there is breath left in us.
For victory of arms alone is for naught if heresy is left unchecked.
To slay the alien is not enough. To hate and curse and purge entire worlds of their taint is not enough still.
No. Only when they have ALL been made to pay for the burning of Rynnsworld, when ALL answer for the lives of untold thousands of Imperial citizens taken in their heathen invasions.
Only when the very last bones of them have been crushed to dust beneath the soles of our iron heels, only when every trace of them is destroyed and their very existance is but a bitter, distant memory will victory truly be won.

I know it will not be an easy task, it is a task that may likely be the very end of us all.
A task we were all trained for. The task we were born for.

I will stand. I will fight. I will die in the name of the Emperor, before I allow a single greenskin the audacity to walk openly upon Imperial soil.
Should I be the only one then so be it.
But I know you each keenly feel the same as I brothers. For what son of Dorn could truly say he does not?

Guilliman has shown us the way! He has given us the tools we need to truly execute the Emperor's blessed vison!
I stand before you as proof!
Follow me into hell itself, cross the Rubicon Primaris, as I have, and join the ranks of our great Purge!

come brothers, we have xeno skulls to crush..."

Pedro Kantor, Capter Master of the Crimson fists addressing his charges upon his crossing of the rubicon primaris... Captain Alessio Cortez's own 'speach' after crossing the rubicon primaris was rather succinct in comparison and in truth a great deal less dramatic;

"somebody fetch me a bolter..."




So yeah, this is the final mini I shall be doing for the crimson fists and as such I figured I should go all-out!

clearly based on tor garradon and inspired by the big bugger in the middle of the rogue trader art (who it turns out IS kantor!) I wanted a big, bad and terrifying beakie to lead the charge.

As with cortez and the heavy bolter guy, I shaved and trimmed the knees and chest clean, then added piping detail to the chest.
This dipiction of dorns arrow (the storm bolter) is based off of the old SM commander plastic stormbolter, allbeit with barrels from bolt-rifles, a magazine assembly from a chaos bolter and the targeter is lifted from a gsc's heavy stubber. I simply couldn't be funted with ammo-feeds and it matters not IMHO.
The helmet is from the darkangels ravenwing sprue but I greenstuffed a more prominent crest to better match the old artwork.
With the artwork in mind I knew I needed the appropriate left pauldron. this also came from the classic plastic commander set and was ideal to give the look I needed.
The plumbob thingy on the crotchplate simply had to go, I mean whats tor garridon doing with this anyway? wallpapering the bunkers? come on!
no a simple swap for a crux terminator (again from the commander sprue) and this helped with the whole backstory I'd created with Cortez going missing and Kantor carrying this in his honour and in hope of his return.
the backpack was a simple swap for a regular heavy intercessor one and does the job.
now, I'm traditionally a "NO CAPES!" kinda guy but this mini has one 'hard-sculpted' in and I had the idea that this has been fashioned from the remnants of the old banner from the dude in the boxart.

now, I will point out, that its not that I didn't want to add the severed ork head, its just, I didn't want to....
look, its just silly looking! and as much as I wanted to replicate the feeling of the art my sillyness will only stretch so far... LOL
however, to show the ork hatred and further suggest at the passage of time I added the ork skull underfoot (taken from an old metal vindicare assassin).
I feel it really makes the pose, he's not resting, no way it would take the weight or fury of those sexy cuban heels.
No, he's right in the middle of crushing that skull to splinters!
A few empty shells from anvil and jobs a good-'un...

Heres a WIP that shows off the build/gs elements.


To sum up, this was a great project and a real nice nostalgia fest, making models that 8 year old me would have loved to see at the time.
one of the benefits of getting better at the hobby as you get older is that you can take these journeys and get some real catharsis out of it.
It's also taught me that I should not be so pedantic about primaris/regular marines/horus heresy. if its cool, build it and paint it.
does it spark joy? if the answer is no its time to move on...
A conclusion it seems that GW has taken under its wing at present with the axing and re-releasing of marine kits of late...

Now that's a fist I love Garridon conversions, makes for solid badassery to end your CR run with. Glad to hear he's stomping that skull, because I certainly had the thought that Ork bones are tough but not that tough

EDIT: The tunneller looks great! An unexpected model from you but fits right in with the construction yellow crew.

I've always loved your Marine kitbashes, never seemed to matter much which torsos you'd use, Primaris, Phobos or firstborn, the results always turned out looking great. Just keep going and leave purism for the purists. You have a knack of making everything look coherent enough.

thanks guys. you keep looking at em, I'll keep converting and painting them!

Kriegers are done!


First up the sgt.
Using the tinylegends kit to its best to replicate that classic pose of the fw resins!
gave him the boltcroppers from tiny legends and an astartes meltabomb and krak-grenade. (yellow because Im trying to force myself to get more comfortable painting it, as you know its a bit of a dread colour for me, much like white...*shudders)
My oft-used shells from the deathwatch kit and the chest light from the plastic krieg set. to prevent the ol' subterrainian-homesick-blues creeping in...


next up is this guy in a fancy tiny legends field-cap.
As he has his cap on, his helmet is on his back (this is from anvil's stahlhelms from the trencher regiments range) as well as a lovely rtcw/where eagles dare reference in the form of a dynamite bundle from the gsc acolyte sprue (yes a bugger to remove the monster claw, but worth it for the colour and character it gives the mini you'll surely agree?
Also featuring a DKOK chest light, this time the lens in a orange gem rather than grey to show it's on. (mainly because he was lacking an eye lens, I figured the gem on the chest would balance this out on the mini.)


Then the most aggressive of the squad, this guy shooting and advancing.
I went to town on the kit on his back, using a cadian body with a shovel on the backpack, I added the pickaxe, boltcropper and a bundle of rope/cable, all from the tiny legends kit.
The grenade comes from the anvil trencher range as is the knife with the brass knuckels on the hilt. I wanted this guy to look like the solid warrior of the group. He's a soldier, there to shoot and stab stuff. Yeah, he carries the excavation gear, but hes not messing about with bombs and charges and all that jazz, he's there to provide cover and carry stuff... simple.


Then another field-cap dude, this time in the camo for a different look.
His gasmask required some alteration to get the head-pose as I wanted, the tube carefully removed and a canister from a spare anvil brodie/gasmask head. not a bad look. one now rendered obsolete by Tiny ledgend's latest kits that contain flexible hoses, making coversion much, much easier.
His grenades are from the grey knights, the skull grenade suggesting at perhaps something chemical or special in some way?
The positively huge melta-charge is from the new plastic krieg. I say huge as the ones in the fw kit or tiy legends kit are about half the size! LOL and again with the chest-light lens for the splash of colour it gives.

heres group pic with t'other one from before:

Not by any means done with the krieg 22nd just yet.
I've a plan for some heavily armoured and heavily armed guys in stalhelms and gasmasks to go with these fellas that'll provide cover/support whilst the engineers go about thier business of doing sneaky explosive thingys and setting up sappy-trappy doo-hickies...

more soon

-REDACTED- no longer relevant

bit of an odds and sods weekend.

so, firstly I got the dogs done:

Donnie is Col. Sumner's (of the Selby 151st) personal warhound.
After the Colonel was awarded the Aquila Imperialis medal for his actions in combat, he promptly removed the medal from his own chest and affixed it to Donnie's harness, stating; "Without him, I'd have never got more than fifty yards through those trenches..."


Vinz, is Commander Grant's (of the 97th scions) tracking hound.
Of vinz, he was heard to remark; "Neither heretics nor xenos can hide from vinz's nose. he sniffs 'em out and we take 'em down..."


Donnie was painted in the blue-grey of a great dane. A simple task of basecoating skavenblight dinge and subsequent lighter drybrushes of admech grey and dawnstone, finishing with some extreme edge highlights of admin grey to his muscletone and face.
Also paying attention to blend some skintone into the ears, around the underbelly and mouth areas, as well as under the eyes and his scars.
His webbing is done in my usual black and brown leather with some green added on the 'wadding'.
Vinz was done as a Masteweiler, a curious breed that can often result in what is essentially a giant rottweiler.
vinz's coat was tackled by a simple drybrush of skavenblight dinge over pure black and a very VERY light drybrush of admech grey over this.
The brown was tackled with tiny layered stippling and highlighting of rhinox hide, mournfang brown, xv88 and lastly zandri dust to achieve the desired blended effect.
For a difference to Donnie and to contrast his dark fur, I did his collar red with brass studs and then, feeling he had enough brown on him already, I did the webbing green with tan 'wadding'.
The noses are simple gloss varnish over black.
The eyes were done with zandri dust and black pupils.
Now, most important; Never do white eyes on dogs or horses. It just looks weird. Trust me, just substitute the white with a tan or light brown of your choosing and It'll look normal.


next I fancied something mechanical so I did this auto-mortar for my Filey 87th:


yes, I know I did one before for the 39th pioneers but that was rather blandly painted in the dirty grey of the artillery and vehicles I had done for said force at the time.
This one references the green and black armour of the Filey 87th and I also added some goblin green on the mortar shells in the drum for a bit of 'pop' (any excuse to use that now!)
I also paid more attention to the direction of the weathering on the drum this time, suggesting rotational scuffing.


finally onto something I ordered from Spellcrow:


everyone knows I love me a good barrel and these are no exception. I went for a less rusty metal approach and a more weathered plastic instead.
using stippling highlights and the contrasting weathering I've been doing on the vehicles of late. so yeah, it works on smaller things!
Going for blue water-butt, propane orange and a yellerun for yellowline trucking co. I've more of these to do so I'm sure I'll get around to them soon...

I had ordered some of the blitzkrieg heads that they have too, intending to use them on some kasrkins as reinforcements for my krieg, but alas they came out way too small for my intended use. Guess I may end up using them on regular guard in the future? who knows...
Still as there's not much love for the krieger's I suppose that's not a huge loss
I'll Just have to rethink those stormtroopers now...

Spellcrow are great by the way, operating out of Warsaw, Poland, they offer a great range of full minis and conversion parts in hand-cast resin and are of a great quality and very affordable. the postage was also surprisingly low. they were also kind enough to throw in some random bits in amongst my order. most likely as a bonus for being a new customer. A very nice and unexpected 1+
Lovely guys. but don't take my word for it, go see for yourselves:
https://www.spellcrow.com/

more soon.