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That's a LOVELY Hydra conversion, and I will have to steal it.

Washes are, really, the best thing to get an army to tabletop standard in a hurry. And for use boots-on-the-group IG'ers...we need all the help we can get!

--Brian

I've got the parts to do a second Hydra turret, so I'll do a walk through later in the week and show you where all the bits came from. The only warning is that it's not cheap as finding the megabolters is hard. I think mine cost £5 each (including P&P) from ebay; which is still cheaper than the FW hydra kit I suppose

Try replicating them or something like it in your "Learn 3D Modelling" thread

The washed-up guard look cool, that's a pretty impressive batch for 6 hours. I've found washes can be a really good way of painting quickly.

Using a paint chart would be horrible, I'd know exactly how much was still undone.

And I hadn't even thought of looking for those mega-vulcans by themselves, I was waiting till I could justify getting a stormlord. Not that I actually have a use for them, but I know once I have some they'll find a home

I happen to have a set lying around of the Mega Bolters.

Wow, a lot of progress indeed !

The painted guards look great, and they'll be greater when all painted ! I'm jealous...

As for the Vulcan Bolters, it does look great, but it's not what I would consider fit for a Hydra.
AAA usually has long barrels for high velocity, which is quite the opposite of those.
That's just my personal opinion though, and they look really nice. I also wouldn't mind if you fielded them as Hydras.

I just don't dig the concept for an anti-aircraft weapon.

Oooo.... ...I like the chart idea. What program did you use to craft it?

The wash method looks great too but I can't bring myself to use it on my IG. I have to see them through to completion with more solid coloring.

The Hydra conversion is pretty nifty. I have to agree with Yggs that it looks a bit odd to me, but I have to admit that it will do the job nicely.

Arakasi wrote:Try replicating them or something like it in your "Learn 3D Modelling" thread

That's the plan. I've already started piecing together some ideas for an alternative Manticore that looks like a mini Praetor


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monkeytroll wrote:Using a paint chart would be horrible, I'd know exactly how much was still undone.

Oh, I've still got lots of other unpainted stuff floating around that's not on there, don't worry! This is just so I can keep track of my Guard forces as I can never quite remember what I own.

Looking great. Are the Pig Iron heads going to be your vets or aircav?

I slogged through 70ish guard in a spree and it is rough. Push through though. I am rooting for you!

Yggdrasil wrote:As for the Vulcan Bolters, it does look great, but it's not what I would consider fit for a Hydra.
AAA usually has long barrels for high velocity, which is quite the opposite of those.

That's a fair comment.
I'm just not a huge fan of the current Hydra designs... I think it's really ugly. I also feel that in a universe where bullets are rocket propelled, the barrel length isn't all that important as they will continue to gain velocity anyway. Much like I think the massive rockets on the Manticore and Deathstrike are ridiculous given the actual damage they do. A rocket the size of the Deathstrike should take out the entire table with a payload that size

One thing I do need to try and do is work out how the ammo gets from the tank to the turret. I may need to buy some of those flexible resin ammo belts very soon to finish this off properly.


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Rabid Ferret wrote:Looking great. Are the Pig Iron heads going to be your vets or aircav?

I slogged through 70ish guard in a spree and it is rough. Push through though. I am rooting for you!

Thanks! At the moment the pig Iron heads are platoon command squads so I've got more basic troops to play around with

Hmmm... I thought barrel length was for accuracy, not velocity. Still - if you 3D up some not Vulcan Bolters with longer barrels (but not *too* long - if that is what you want) - maybe you can have the best of both worlds? (Cheap guns, no IP infringement, win!)

It's definitely velocity (Here's a long article about it, with maths), but I still go with the rocket propelled bullets mean I don't need massive barrels

Okay - I think we can safely say I know nothing (well, now, very little) about the intricacies of barrel length, velocity and accuracy and how they relate to each other

Neither did I. And I still don't after trying to read that article

Well they usually get linked... As a longer barrel (for man-sized weapons at least) means more space between both ends of the metal sights, in turn meaning higher accuracy...

Also, higher velocity helps with reducing the influence of wind & earth rotation, as the bullet takes less time to travel from gun to target - which helps in being accurate too.

So you weren't wrong either !

[edit : not counting the fact that the less time it travels to the target, the less the target moves between the shooting & the impact where you had aimed.

Also fixed typos]

Cool, thanks for the clarification. You can tell that neither of us comes from a country or career that involves firearms.

I guess you'd want to rephrase that sentence before a Brit soldier gets annoyed at you...

Also as I said, I think the looks is great... I'm just being picky - which you're entirely right to ignore

End T - I'm really liking the Vulcan Mega Bolter turret on the hydra. Looking forward to seeing it finished.

The servitors are really nicely done.

This is thoroughly inspiring me to try painting an army again.



Peter

That "Vulcanydra" is amazing! I love it! Although i would be inclined to put a spacer to lengthen the barrels by about 1/2" but i guess thats just personal preference. It looks great on your modified chassis though.

Love the wash use on the troops. The mega bolter looks awesome too

Oops, forgot to comment on the troops! They look great, i love how effective the washes are, and youve pulled off a masterclass there!

My take:

Many many many rocket propelled bullets will easily handle both range and accuracy in a Galaxy where worlds are made entirely out of Lava. And Pudding. Lava pudding.

Screw 'reality'.

--Brian, looking for his Wulcan Megabolters...

Wow. What a burst of activity we've had today, both in thread and out of it!

Thanks for all the comments, especially Yggs feedback on AAA, velocity and muzzle length. It's been a great lesson in military engineering and was, oddly, what I wanted to do when I left school! Well, designing fighter planes was, but it's related, right?

Anyway. On to the off-thread update. Here's tonight's chart that Arakasi will tell me to stop doing so I can paint more...



This large jump in greenery means I finished 27 of the 54 miniatures that were in this batch. The rest need skin, hair, bionics and scarves painting, but should be finished tomorrow evening if I get the time. All in all, I'm pleased with the way these guys look and can't wait to see them all based up and facing down someone's army!



Understandably the first two test models are easily the best as they had more time and thought put into them... but not noticeably so. It probably took about 2.5 hours to do the TauSept, Gryphonne wash, blue wash and green grenades that I'd missed. I think the full batch of 54 is going to have taken about 10-11 hours start to finish, which isn't so bad. One lesson for next time though is to reverse the painting order a bit. If I do the Charadon Granite washes first, I can cover the cloth and armour with the Devlan mud, giving even more contrast to the armour and having to be less picky about where the washes go. Hopefully this will speed it up a bit more should I decide to add more lasguns... which let's be honest is pretty much given.

Lookin great! only thing is do you plan on hitting that gold with some dirty weathering powders as i think the earth look would bring it together with the rest of the earthtone armor

I love the vulcan bolter hydra

Rogue Wolves wrote:Lookin great! only thing is do you plan on hitting that gold with some dirty weathering powders as i think the earth look would bring it together with the rest of the earthtone armor

Eventually I will go back and dirty it all up, but I want to get everything painted first and work out the unit markings to go on the shoulder pads.

Last night I finished another batch of guys. 10 more lasguns, 3 sergeants, 1 grenade launcher, 1 melta, 2 flamers... so the force chart is slowly turning from yellow to green.

I've also been looking at where I want to go from here, which includes filling out the platoons a bit more and realised quite how much these Cadian upgrades are costing

A plastic platoon box comes with:
20 pTroops, 3 heavy weapon squads, a sentinel and the PCS ( £47.20)
This would need 4 packs of the hazard upgrades @ £18.50 each to upgrade them all which would total (including plastics) £121.20. That's a lot of cash!

I really really need to get off my arse and work out my own heads and bodies properly so I can just buy more plastic boxes, rather than spending an extra £70+ purely to upgrade them.

I feel a bit sick now... I think I need to lie down.

(or look at Wayland
For the same cost I can get two Chimera (to finish the Hydras), a Valk, a Demolisher and a standard Russ!

Not to jump on the bandwagon, but I love what you've got going on here. The paint scheme is not only unique, but also realistic and believable. The Vulcan Hydra is a super win, and I love the cadian respirator heads! Phew ( take a breath now, Rawson ) The hazard packs are FW, right? I went with the Elysian respirator heads just for the savings.

Keep up the great work!

Cheers,
Rawson

After three days much needed holiday, I've got a rather large update for you all. It's a shame I had to go back to work today, otherwise it would be even further along than it is! First up is the current status chart. If you were paying attemtion to the last one, this has been reshuffled slightly to take into account a few recent deliveries from InMyGravenImage (Thanks!), some strategic thinking and realising that all those spare flamers could be used as special weapon squads to run around claiming objectives. Duh!



I'd managed to get a Thudd Gun (with DKoK crew) and a Centaur from Graven. The Thudd gun should be a fun little toy to use up some of those Elite slots that I rarely use. The Centaur on the other hand, is being converted to fit another role. I've never been a huge fan of the Deathstrike concept as it's supposed to be an ICBM... why the heck would you take one of those that close to the battle front? What you would do though it send a forward scout up to call in the strike, so I've hacked apart one of the FW sensor arrays and created a MoO style character to stand in the back of the Centaur. I had to carefully disassemble the model to clean up some of the joints, but this allowed more access to create a driver and swap the flamer for a heavy bolter.



The Platoons are now finished. 4 full squads of infantry, two platoon command squads, two special weapon squads with flamers and 8 heavy weapon stands. The heavies and flamers didn't photograph properly, so once I've based everything properly I'll go through and make sure everything has nice pictures. In the mean time... here's the infantry and command squads



I've restarted Straken so that he fits with the new colour scheme. Lots to do on him still...


I also found a use for the heavy bolter guy I started a year or so back. I'm not sure why I never thought of making him Harker before... duh! I can't remember where the head came from right this second, but when I remember I'll come back and update the post as it's really nicely done. Again, this model is very much a WIP as I'm aiming to spend more time on the characters.


what else was there... Oh. I've also stuck together (finally!) my two Macharius', including magnetising the sponson weapons. I've also created a pinning system on my three sentinels with all the weapon options so I can pick and choose what they have. I tried magnets, but it needed at least two sets to stop the guns pointing at the floor. Two pins is much easier...

Not bad for three days work!

Nice update, chart certainly looks greener. Green is best

Impressive going with the infantry, and nice idea for the deathstrike.

Please do let us know when you recall where that head came from, it is very nice.

Also I'm sure you've told us before, but what was Straken's helmet from?

looking nice so far, and the head is a Puppets War Civil War Guardsmen head, nice set they have there i have some of em