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Hello all, I recently picked up a handful of chaos marines in a trade and I've been kicking around the thought of making a 40k army based upon my football team; the Oakland Raiders.

I'll be working on a list of famous raiders, current raiders, and even various raiders fans who will be translated into my 40k chaos army. Then try and keep up the modeling and painting that I do here on this blog. I hope you guys enjoy my new project. I have all kinds of fun plans to detail in dead and dying KC chiefs on my larger bases, and on some of my more unique models.

The most iconic Raider of all time...Al Davis! With the many jokes of undead Al and his raider minions out there, I had to put him into a past hero catagory. Helbrute, Mauler fiend, none of these seemed quite unique enough to be the original Oakland Raider. Demon prince, Blood thirster, these all seemed to personal and current for me. Traipsing through the forgeworld site one day however I found the Decimator. A unique, gigantic dreadnought possessed by both ancient marine leader, and demonic energy, this seemed the quintessential model to be Al Davis. Also would give me the canvas and to write his famous sayings, and a model that I could play regularly.

John Madden: Once again, a founding father of my chapter of chaos space marines, John Madden is too big a personality for a simple 40k model. This man can only be caged in a titan. At some point in the far future when money rains from the sky I'll grab a titan for my chaos army and name him after my favorite Raiders coach.

Lester the molester Hayes: Easily my favorite Raider of the past, he would do anything, everything, and then a little bit more to take his opponent out of a game. Well, cornerbacks like Lester I think will best be represented by Raptor/warp talons, and being the best raider at that position in my mind. I'm using the chaos raptor lord.




Well, we shall start with good old Lester. Below is a painted picture of the model I'm using. I've already started the process of making him a Raider. First I'm removing some of the crazy over detailing that GW seems to love these days. (Always bothered me the if it's an open space ad a jewel that eldar models have.)

So first I cleared his right shoulder pad, cutting, and filing off the arrow pattern so that I can put my Raiders chapter emblem on there instead. Both sides had the funny hook spike from the lower edge removed. Next the spike directly below his chin, and the one pointed into his belly. (It makes no sense to me that you would have big pointy things which prevent you from flexing, and chance impaling yourself whenever you take off or land with your jump pack.
(Bad camera phone pic 1)

I then had to cut in more of the chain detail as the inboard edges of the links were blended into the arrow detailing. As well as his breast plate collar. Next I cut, and shaped away the cables on his back that extended to his lightning claws. I'll replace these with bronze wire that extends out away from his body and then back into the re-positioned gloves.
(Bad camera phone pic 2)

The right glove I made light cuts along the elbow joint, then bent forward with padded pliers. The right glove I cut entirely on both sides of the elbow joint for re-positioning forward.

On his jet pack, I've cut away complicated chain and spike combination extending up. This will be replaced either by a standard with the Raiders emblem, or a spike with a KC chief helmet. Alternately if I don't like the way either of those work, I'll leave it off.

Sounds good so far. Just one small issue
Where are the photos

Right, sorry about that. Here are some pics to go along with it, although I'm afraid they're camera phone pics not the nice camera yet. When I get a bit more done on him I'll pass some higher quality pics along as well.

A little bit more work on the Lester Haynes. I cut off the chain and spike deals on the jump pack, and smoothed out the central rockets arrow bits. This is where his jersey number will go. I've got a little more smoothing out to do before it's done. As to the wires above that, I'm going to ad a board/parchment bit for his name.


The hardest part so far has been carving the small chain around his left leg to completion after I removed the wires from the gauntlet on that side. In retrospect it may have been easier to smooth them away completely, then ad them back in with green stuff. Ah well.



I'm thinking about removing the base chain and chaos icon, then replace it with a pinned down marine painted up like Richard Marshall, the Chiefs number one receiver Hayes played against.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Okay, I've done some more on Lester, but first I thought a picture would be appropriate to see whom I'm modeling after.


I ended up removing the left arm as well, with the plan of twisting it slightly to give the gauntlet wires a better throw. I've now re-attached the arms with pins, super glue, and then once somewhat stable I began the green stuff.
From the front.


I like to do a combination of sculpting while it's malleable, then when it is mostly dry to a little bit of cutting with a scalpel. Finally a couple of days later I'll come back with my fine jewelers files and get a constant burnish to the green stuff.
From the back.


I've also finished cleaning up the jump pack and added the placard that will have Hayes on it.

On the right shoulder pad you can see the start of the raiders emblam, I smooshed a wad of green stuff on, then after a few hours when it was partially kicked, I cut it and was able to make slight shape alterations. Next I'll fit in the swords and the face in the center. I'm also going to do this with a handful of normal marine shoulder pads and a terminator shoulder pad. If they come out well I will start casting them so that I can more easily mark my average soldiers.


Now as I'm looking at that awsome picture of Hayes. I'm thinking about cutting up his legs and matching that. It could be challenging and fun. While I'm not sure about getting the torso bent over all the way parallel to the ground like that. I think I could spread his legs out a touch, have his talons stuck into Marshall, and then his two lightning claw arms out. (Marshall will now help keep him at the same height as he normally would be for LOS purposes. Hmmmm. This is my plan for a crazy in depth project. I'll sleep on it and consider chopping him apart more tomorrow afternoon.

The answer is yes. I really want to push myself with this project, so I shall be removing Lester's arms, and clipping his legs. I also need to get my hands on a couple of marines to kill in the near future. Hmm. Ebay here I come. I have the TSHFT tournament coming up this weekend, so I likely won't get any notable work done between now and then. Polish up my tyranids just a bit for that instead.

Cheers everyone and have a great week.

Enter football season. Wrapped up with the Eldar for a bit, so it's time to get back to the Iron Raiders. After sleeping on my plans for Lester Hayes, and a couple months passing by. Yes I will be re-posing him and challenging myself. So I've pulled his arms back off, cut off his legs at the knees, and then cut his legs off at the hip as well. A lot of hacking out the chain and loin cloth thing in the middle.



I re-pinned and glued his thighs with a heavy bend to try and mimic the pose Hayes liked to take. Once the glue dried I added green stuff to the basic shape that I wanted, now return to trim it down, shape it a little bit, then ad more green stuff detail to match the way I would like it to look.



I've also started working on the basic troops I'd like in the army. I ended up with a handful of khorne berzerkers and I wanted to use them as my tester. I couldn't stand the bunny ears, so I lopped them off. Turns out that when you clean up the helmet and follow the shape of it. This turns into a pretty good looking pre-heresy style helmet. From there I started painting up similar to the Raiders uniform. Silver on the helmet. Coal black stripe on top, as well as the chest. Then Iron oxide for some depth to the legs. I'll come back and wash it with some neutral grey to match the color I'm aiming for. I've tried a bronze highlight for the plate edges, but I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with that. I also need to come back and figure out where to place the numbers and eventually with the power pack put a name board. I couldn't figure out how I was going to rationalize the placing of hall of fame super raiders into the troops FOC. So I came up with, I'll place modern day raiders there instead. I have a handful of forgeworld plague marines, I plan on filling in the holes in their armor and clean them up a little. Then mark them down as o-line and d-line.

Got a lot of work done this football saturday. I got started on some arms for my berzerker troop tester. Gave him a chain sword and melta gun, using the berzerker arms I had. Also started making the raiders symbol on his sword arm.


Speaking of Raider shields. I hit the green stuff pretty hard today and got them on a bunch of MK II and MK III shoulder pads. I found that the forgeworld resin really would not take the green stuff. Tried scratching the resin, then eventually just drilling holes for it to adhere better. Made up one fancier pad with the fanged skull on it. I had some sabres from fantasy I attached to either side, and I like the way they look.



With spare green stuff I started re-building the thighs on my Lester Hayes model, but didn't really make much progress there. It's the slow process of redefining the bands and arrows on the thigh space. I also found a great model to represent big old Marcus Allen. The space sharks terminator lord, great big lightning claws and ripping palms. Seems like that could work well to represent the greatest Oakland running back ever. I started out cleaning up the lines and such, adding the raiders shield and taking a look at what I'd like to do to repose him, if I do.


I also began the work on the Al Davis Decimator. All those cables in the resin around his body were a nightmare of flashing and pour detail. I cut off a lot of the ugly ones, and carefully chopped out filler. Once I have him upright and partially assembled I plan on adding a couple of cables back in with a trial mix of actual copper wire, pinning stock, and green stuff. I've also smoothed out the upper most layer on his shoulder pads. The resin seemed a little bit thin here, and I wanted a nice big panel to write down some of Als most famous statements.


That's the update so far, looking forward to getting some more paint on my tester guy, and doing some more modeling on my big characters.