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So it happened again, another project restarted, Adeptus Mechanicus.

This time I blame Matt/Rictus for causing my A.D.D, he has secured for me some of the new Ad Mech Thallanx models, and kickstarted my brain into thinking all things red and mechanical.

Also I have to thank The Damned Artificer/Steffan. He has to many cool threads on Warseer so I'm sure you all know who he is. I asked him for some help, and he furnished me with an amazing new water mark, something I could not have developed myself. Unfortunately it has become necessary to water mark my pics because they were used without my permission or credit by another blog, which I won't mention because he doesn't deserve more traffic.

Enough house keeping on to the pics:


Re-tasked assembly line servitor and Ad Mech menial

The basis for all these conversions are the cultists from the "new" Dark Vengeance set. I bought a set just because on release, and have since bought another set of just the cultists from Matt. This means I have 40 bodies to turn in Cultists of the Ommnisah.


"Clamps" and Ad Mech Menial #2

The idea behind these models is that they are the workers of the Mechanicum, pressed into service as my tyranid hive fleet invades the forge world and the whole planet is militarised to repel the invaders. As such, they will be heavily converted, and based to fit the tyranids too. The sparse foilage and the toxic looking sand I think fits the fluff, as the tyranids try to take over the ecosystem and push the biology to its maximum, but the poisons and polution mean that there is very little to actually grow.


Welder turned flamer guy, and re-tasked servitor #2

I have also bought several sets of the old OOP FW spore chimneys to populate the eventual table with, and COD buildings and tanks to ruin as well.


Welder turned flamer guy #2, and another menial

Eventually I will produce more Praetorians, Skitarri vehicles and tech adepts to fill out the list, but ATM this is simply a modelling exercise that's gotten out of hand in my mind.


Menial #5, and the Tech Adept SGT

I have made a promise to myself that I will make a minimum of 2 troops choices before I start on the "cool" stuff, but we all know how long that will probably last once the Thallanx arrives.


Group shot

Thanks for looking, let me know what you think, and if you have any suggestions for units or models you think would be cool/fluffy.

Cheers

Sheep

Duuuuuude. Dems some sick as looking AdMech.

Great use of the Cultists too. Consider me subbed and eager.

Thanks mate, glad you like them

I like how you have changed the chaos stars into cogs, very cunning. And I like the eyes, those will look suitably bizarre. I think you could possibly go a bit more bizarre with some of the models as they are still quite recognisable.

Did you see this thread by Exokan (http://s3.zetaboards.com/The_Ammobunker/topic/7605428/1/)? Some good ideas there.

Thanks for the link bruticus, some great stuff in there to use as inspiration.

I'm happy someone noticed the cogs

Fantastic and creative work, mate, all the bionics are beautiful! Really clean work to get rid of the chaos iconography too. Will be watching this with interest. Really inspirational!

Thanks for the kind words Scarper

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So in between studying and playing the good boyfriend I've managed to compete in a tournament over the last weekend, where despite my massively hung over state on the Sunday I managed to pull a respectable 5th, and won best painted with the nids. The gift voucher went towards fodder for the Ad Mech, more specifically a plastic cairn wraith, and a box of flagellants.

And from that, and a dip in the bitz box I made my first Magos.





One of the featues I'm most happy with is the gun on the end of the mechandrite on the models left, it looks suitably Mech-y to me, that strange mix of hi-tech and archaic that suits the Ad Mech so well





I'm really happy with the design, I think the legs could have been better, next time I will vary their lengths more, and make them fit the base, not the base fit them.

Thanks for looking, let me know what you think.

These are awesome. The Magos especially. I've always liked the idea of multiple connected armies telling a story. I will be watching.

That Magos is fantastic looking. Very Ad-Mechy.

What do you have planned for the flagellants? Just more Skitarii?

*Sigh* I love your logs. Although I hate that your not painting the SoH anymore!

Thanks guys

Snrub: at the moment just more machine cultists, to add a bit of variety to the body types and clothing. But I will eventually be using them as the base for the skitarri/tech guard as well.

Exile: I am/will be painting more of them don't worry, these guys are just an itch I had to scratch

Awesome.

Hooray for Sheep! (The dakkadakka dude, not the animal. Although they are tasty and wool is useful...)

Nice.


Any plans on getting some the Ad-Mechy goodness that Forgeworld have released or will-be-hopefully releasing?

Big plans mate

wow that Magos looks amazing. Cant wait to see what else you pull out of the hat.
As a fellow Nid painter I'm heading straight off to see what you've been up to with them now.
Keep up the good work.

Thanks mate, unfortunately I'll be slowing down a bit due to the workload at uni, but I'll try and get some paint on the guys I've built

Welcome to another installment of Sheep's procrastination from study, today I can present some more WIP shots of 3 machine cultists, a knight, and his base.



Firstly, the things that excite every Ad mech modeler, knights. I will be using this as a forge fiend in my current thinking, so another shoulder weapon will be added.

The base model is of course a dreadknight, and it still looks too much like one for me atm. I need to figure out a way to make a curved glacius plate of some kind, or some kind of sarcophagus like the SM dread. As a further tie in to the nids, hes posing in a suitably safari like stance on the body of his last victim. What colour blood do you think tyranids have?



No idea what the physiology of a tyranid creature should look like, so some random balls of putty and entrail like tubes will have to do. Blood effects and burns like its been hit with a large plasma discharge are what I see in my mind for the damage, once I figure out the colour of the blood.

Finally, 3 more machine cultists.



these have been made from the close combat equipped cultists and cadian arms. Alot of chopping and reposing went into getting the arms to sit flush, I used surprisingly little greenstuff on hiding the actual joins. They are suffering from a minor case of "gorilla syndrome" due to the difference in the size of the cadian and their original arms.

That's it for the moment, any suggestions on continuing the knight titan conversion would be appreciated.

Thanks for looking.

The Magos looks brilliant and so does the Knight (especially the base ).
Everything else looks great too.

As for the knight,

Heres Dave Taylors take on it which looks really cool
WIP http://davetaylorminiatures.blogspot.fi/2013/05/volsinii-imperator-of-knight-household.html
Finished http://davetaylorminiatures.blogspot.fi/2013/06/volsinii-imperator-complete.html

I also happened upon Route66's knight conversion


I think Route66's method might work better with your style, maybe replace the SM helmet with a dome or something.

OH HELL YES!

That looks grouse. If i may put forward an idea? How about a servitor gunner wired into the hole infront of a console or something?


Also are you aware of these nifty Ad-Mechesque weapons from Maxmini?

The physiology of the carnifex looks convincing and the knight looks great.

Thanks guys

Igandris: cheers, several people have pointed me towards Daves excellent knight, and it's given me some ideas, I don't like how it doesn't have a "face", there's no focal point on the front/centre.
The other one, route66s, looks like its gone too much the other way. Crossing into transformer territory there. Hopefully I can find a happy middle ground.

Snrub: thanks mate I had a similar thought, but it doesn't fit the "armoured behemoth" thing if you can just snipe out the pilot, ill save the idea for an artillery piece or something.
I hadn't seen those weapons before either mate, cheers, they look pretty handy!

Boring stuff: cheers mate, the only thingi really had to go off was the dissection picture from the 4th ed tyranid book.

What about something like a sarcophagus for the Knight, but with the Ad-Mech skull with sensors as the 'face' ? Looking at your WIP though I'm thinking the front end of a Landspeeder as the basis for the cockpit

Cheers for the ideas mate, land speeder might be too big though. I'm thinking ill have to scratch build something.


Automatically Appended Next Post:


I'm not really sure where I'm going with it to be honest, especially that white space behind the head, everything else is curved, and its just a panel of negative space. I'll admit I've just been making it up as I go along so the continuity of ideas is a bit disjointed.

The head is a cast of the SM apocalypse upgrade sensor cut in half, a half again removed and glued back together, there still needs to be some smoothing, but I have to wait for the GS to cure.

The torso has been filled out some, managed to fit a cog motif into the detailing, there will be some more on the shoulders to come. Replaced the tabard with something grander, more space for free hand.



I bought a small bag of brass cogs from watches from a seller on ebay, and they've come in handy for some quick detailing. The shield will be split into thirds, with more free hand on the top two thirds split vertically.

I have a design for a shoulder cannon teasing me in the back of my brain, I just can't seem to get it to work in plastic or putty yet. plus I still don't know which shoulder to put it on, and once i do, what to do with the other shoulder.

The one thing I am worried about is that the head looks a bit too "tau". I blame the riptide, I wouldn't be thinking it if it didn't exist.

Any ideas or comments on my wandering thought processes would be greatly appreciated.

I'm sure you have them but here are some of the older images of the originals:




I'm assuming by the missile pod arms your going for the Crusader class knight (or the castellan I think the other double weapon knight was called). Either way, for your head dillema I'd go with the Lord style head at this point. The Squire's doesnt fit with the hunched shoulder design. Problem with the knight is that its supported 'under' the cowel comming off of the upper carapace design. Your mini wouldnt really support that unless you stripped the lower housing (which I wouldnt cuz it looks great). Remember, if its a Knight, then there is a pilot in there and not one like a dreadnought, but more like a sentinel where the dude can actually get out and stuff.

Consider me jealously subbed as I am a huge fan of ad-mech but lack the skills to do it justice. I'm excited to see where this goes as you obviously do have the skills!

Thanks for such a comprehensive reply mate. Its not representing a knight in the traditional sense, personally I think they'd be bigger, almost the size of the wraithknight.

I'm planning on running them in a thallank castellex block for HH, so they might represent the heavy robots from the maniples ADB describes in "First heretic".

I thought the bulbous area under the sensor head could be a place to house the servitor pilot, like a dreadnaught, but with less autonomy, hence the BS3. Just an idea.

Yeah I see where your going with the maniple idea. The head placement is good in that case but your right, it looks way to Tau. Maybe add a carapace section on the top leaving a slit and do a single optic that rotates horizontally 180 degrees? I think I saw an ork deff-dred with something like that so maybe not, just spitballing.

PS: I agree that a true "Knight" should be much larger than a Dreadknight. I'm thinking that much as the Tactical Dreadnought Armor (Terminators) are a reduction from a dreadnought, so to is the Dread-knight a reduction of a proper Knight.

Assignment submitted, drank too much coffee, so I finished this guy because I couldn't sleep.



And he looks pretty damn good if I do say so myself.



Additions since last update have been rivets on the cog motif on the shoulders, cables to the head, a smoke launcher, the shoulder cannon, and some manipulator arms.



Plenty of images this time around.



The rear is almost unchanged from the stock dreadknight kit, the only change I can think of is the removal of some cables on the legs that got in the way of the reposing. And since the legs are mirrored I had to remove them from the other side too.



I may go back and add some cables to the legs, and some purity seals, but the major components and pose are locked in.



This shot shows the tracking of the shoulder cannnon relative to the head, I imagine that the cables snake in and out of the torso so as not to get too long or short and reduce the likelyhood of them snagging on anything.



Close up shot of the head and manipulator arms. They were made with some necron warrior arms I found in my bits box, the hands were removed, and claws made out of plasticard tube and rod the same as the cultists, I think it gives some nice scale, and would allow the machine to manipulate small objects/assist in battlefield repairs of other robots or tanks in an emergency situation.





The cannon was converted from a sensor piece I found in my bits box, it comes either from the aegis line or the fortress of redemption set. I picked it up in a trade a while ago. The armour plating was made with putty and plasticard I-beam. The rotator mount from plastic tube and tube, and the arms of the articulator from square rod and L-beam.

The conversion has made me very happy, and is alot more involved then I had initially planned. The only additions I might make from here are the previously mentioned purity seals and leg cables, and maybe extending the plasticard cog motif to the knees or shins.

Thanks for looking and please let me know what you think.

Dude that is freaking sweet. I love the little manipulator arms.

What's next on your table?

Knight is really nice. Keep these coming

Subbed. For the Glory of the Machine God!