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After quite a few years of hiatus, I've come skulking back to Warhammer, and while I have dusty boxes full of poorly painted Dark Elves and half-constructed Space Marines, I thought I needed something new. I spent a few days messing around on wikis looking at cool themed armies I could do, and while I toyed with Eldar Corsairs or Ancient Greece-inspired Necrons (which I maintain would be awesome) I kept coming back to the Hammer of the Emperor, and while a Rogue Trader's private army held some appeal, it was the Maccabian Janissaries that really stole the show for me.

Let's be real: it was the masks. They just look so freaking badass, I'm a total sucker for the "sculpted human face" mask/helmet thing (on Romans, on Vikings, wherever). For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, here's a pic:



Bad. Ass.

The Maccabian Janissaries are a Calixian Regiment of the Astra Militarum made up of pilgrims and descendants of pilgrims to the shrine world of Maccabeus Quintus who live lives of constant crusading warfare, never expecting to see home again which they know is totally worth it because they get to wear those bitchin' helmets. Here is the full wiki entry if you want all the background.

So froth aside, the sole reason to build and army of Maccabian Janissaries is to have a whole bunch of dudes running around with those masks, issue is that those masks are the greatest challenge to the completion of said army. I had a few ideas

Obviously I could model them from scratch using green-stuff. My experience of free modelling green-stuff has been mixed, I've never had any desperate failings or anything, but neither has anything ever turned out as good as it looked in my head, it's still an option, but it's been back-burnered in favour of... Press Moulding!

Doing my obligatory Google homework I found that, while I'm not the first person to have the idea of making Maccabian Janissaries, there don't seem to be any complete armies out there either mostly due to the difficulty of making those masks, no doubt. The general consensus seemed to be that Sanguinary Guard heads would be the best bet, but raiding ever bits website in the world was no guarantee of getting enough heads for my guardsmen, as well as being prohibitively expensive, thus, press moulding.

I ordered the Sanguinary Guard head I wanted from a bits website in Australia (where I am) as well as all the bits I'd need to put one "proof of concept" sergeant together. I trimmed the halo off the head and the little breather-tube things and ended up with this:



Rolled myself up a blob of green stuff and made this:



And after leaving the mould to cure overnight, pressed out one of these bad-boys this morning:



I did a little bit of extra work on him, slightly deepening the eye-sockets and mouth (as they're what really define the face, at this scale) and left him to cure, pressing out another half-dozen and giving them the same treatment. Obviously they're not perfect, and I might actually go ahead and buy more Sanguinary Guard heads for stuff like HQs and elite units, but as I always say, it's good enough for government work (pretty sure that's the galactic motto of the Astra Militarum anyway).

The rest of the plan is basically to hollow out as much of the face from Cadian heads and trim my wee mouldings to fit, I'll be using Cadian torsos (not quite right but blah-blah government work) and arms and I bought a few dozen of these:



Because to hell with modelling greatcoat legs myself.

So that's where I'm up to now. I have twenty Cadians, two Chimeras, a Russ and a Commissar winging their way to me at the moment, so it might be a little while before I can really get under way, but I'm pretty pumped for this army, and hopefully doing a log thing like this will keep me honest (and from losing interest when it all gets too damn hard).

Wish me luck!

This seems interesting, I'll make sure to keep an eye on this blog

I always thought those guys were super cool. I can't wait to see how they come out.

Good start!
I'm technically working on a perpetually delayed Jes Goodwin styled guard army and commissioned these heads last year:
http://mywayminiatures.com/catalog/bits/guardsman-helmet-open
No mask, but the rest of the helmet is the same. Just fyi.

They do look good, but I've found that if I just shave down the boxy bits on the side of Cadian helmets that they look pretty good, and I can file down the wings on the aquila to just leave the skull, like the Janissaries have

Ambitious, and lots of potential. Looking forward to more.

I always like when people are not following the dull Cadian line! Your project looks swell !

The project is not dead! Real life just did that annoying "getting in the way" thing.

I've been piecing tanks together (and gee whiz if that isn't satisfying) and I'm just about ready to whack some paint on the first of my Janissaries, I'll hopefully have a mode substantive update in the next few days.

Have you looked at the Stormcast Eternals probably a good source of similar style heads without breaking the bank.

 Llamahead wrote:
Have you looked at the Stormcast Eternals probably a good source of similar style heads without breaking the bank.

Ooh yeah. hadn't thought of that. Still probably a bit expensive for grunts, but would definitely make some showcase models easier!

In the meantime, here's my first (almost) Janissary, the last wash is still a bit wet and obviously he's missing an arm, but I'm really happy with how he turned out, the GS-cast mask isn't even the best one I was able to turn out. This is probably about the standard I'll be looking to paint most of my Infantry Platoons and Veterans to, and will probably improve slightly as I get more comfortable.



Pretty happy considering it's the first full model I've painted in almost ten years.

Nice

Looking at the artwork the first thing I thought of was the new Age of Sigmar Stormcast models.

Good luck, definitely an ambitious project.

Very ambitious, I like the idea behind it, I think once you've completed about 5 you'll get a better feel for the army

Not bad at all. At squad size the effect should be quite impressive.

Alright, at long last I have completed a paltry five guardsmen. Despite the glacial pace at which I completed these guys, I'm pretty happy with the outcome. They aren't winning any awards, but I'm happy with them for line troopers.



Modelling all the teeny tiny gloves was a bit of a nightmare, but I like the effect, and it helps separate them a little from your vanilla Cadians.

The legs from Victoria Lamb are great (I also just found out she's Australian, so woo for local industry) and world's better than I'd be able to manufacture myself, so I'll be placing semi-regular orders with her going into the future.

As you can probably see, there's a bit of variety in the quality of the masks, From left to right, 1 and 5 are pretty rubbish, I think they were from the first mold I made, 2 and 4 are great, if I can get them all looking like that from now on I'll be a happy camper, 3's somewhere in between.

Now to commence modelling the next five, which will get me a whole fifth of the way to 1000 points (Jesus, why didn't I do Grey Knights?). Also at some point in the near future: Tanks!

EDIT: Obviously these don't have bases, I don't particularly want to fork out for resin bases considering this is a hordeish army, so will probably do something with crackle paint, a bit of sand and static grass. As the models are all quite cool in colour scheme (the only warm paint on them is the tiny red lens of their lasguns) I wanted to make the bases a slightly reddish desertscape, with patches of yellowy-green grass, not quite full Mars style, but still on the warm end, thoughts? Opinions? Counter-proposals?

While not exactly tiny plastic men, I spent today making a bunch of these:



The inspiration is obvious, and they'll be mission rewards at Zedtown: The Wasteland, a game that started as Humans vs Zombies a few years ago, but now bears more resemblance to a sort of zombie apocalypse LARP.

Really happy with how they turned out.