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Hello! It's been about 5 years since I played 40K where I was eventually an Astra Militarum player - after building a bunch of other armies over the course of 13 or so years. I've had an idea for years though about what an Astra Militarum gun/patrol boat would look like ala US Navy Vietnam-era brown water navy. There have been a couple I've seen online but they didn't really feel right to me but now, with forced time at home, I suddenly find myself with plenty of time to build one!

The fluff behind the model is: The planet Serra, not particularly noteworthy in any way, has long been mined for it's rich cobalt deposits - critical in the manufacture of various Imperial ship and munitions components. This led to the construction of several hive cities and a number of domed garden habitats for the wealthy nobility which protects them from the blue-grey cobalt oxide dust that covers most of the planet. While the air within the domed habitats is never a concern, the rest of the planet is forced to rely on massive air filters around the planet to provide air that won't destroy the lungs of those who breath it. However, they were never able to keep up with the pollution caused and the passage of three millennia hasn't done anything to improve their effectiveness.

The planet's surface is covered in industrial canals and waterways connecting the various cities, mines, and processing plants. Some time ago, the planet was invaded by a splinter of an ork Waaagghhh!!! that devastated a number of hive cities and domed habitats. While a combined Imperial force of Astra Militarum, PDF, space marines, and even an Imperial Knight household ultimately eradicated the orks, the nature of the orks' reproduction means that the remaining facilities are still at risk of periodic attack by feral orks. Forces of the PDF responded to this threat by developing a force of patrol gunboats whose mission was simply to patrol those industrial waterways and destroy feral orks whenever they encountered them. However, once the immediate threat to the ruling elite ended, they ceased to care what happened outside their domes and did not allow any resources to go towards the proper construction and outfitting of the needed boats leaving the crews to scrounge and "borrow" whatever material they could to create them.

This has led to the re-purposing of various yachts and tugboats to make up the hulls and the fitting of whatever weaponry the crews came across. They are essentially left to their own devices - their only mission from the ruling nobility is to not allow them to be bothered with trivial matters such as feral ork incursions or the need for weaponry, food, or other supplies.

The crew of this boat managed to "find" the top of a Chimera hull and the turret with a multilaser which forms the rear armament and a Knight's Icarus Autocannon which forms the forward armament. They also supplemented the original engine from the boat with a reactor scrounged from the one of the many battlefields and routed the exhaust through the manifolds pulled from a knight thermal cannon. I covered over the lasgun ports in the Chimera to hopefully look like skylights to illuminate the interior. There will be mid-mounted heavy bolters, bridge mounted heavy stubber, and a few crew members running around, shooting, and carrying ammo boxes. I also used a spare knight helmet from a knight a built a few years ago as a figurehead and embellished it with some metal wings from a fantasy eagle I somehow ended up with probably about 10 years ago - I'm glad to finally have something to do with them.

While the construction of the boat itself is largely complete - just needs to green stuff to finish and I'll probably put a few more bits on it to 40K it up a bit - I'm getting started on the crew. They will mostly be a combination of of Anvil Industries and Victoria Miniatures bits with some GW as well. I got the package for Victoria Miniatures today and immediately built the skipper you see here. It took more trimming than I expected but I think it turned out pretty well. I'm going to wait for the Anvil Industries box to get here before I do any of the others.

Anyways, let me know what you think! I'll post updates as appropriate - comments and advice are very much appreciated.

Nice work and good fun fluff. Looking forward to seeing more progress.

Great bit of conversion and fluff for it. Love these types of projects. Hope to see more of it. What model is the hull from? Some old freighter model?

Really nice project. I look forward to follows its progress.

That looks great! I can't wait to see it painted.

edwardmyst wrote:
Great bit of conversion and fluff for it. Love these types of projects. Hope to see more of it. What model is the hull from? Some old freighter model?

It's built off of the Revell 1:144 scale HMCS Snowberry Flower Class Corvette model. It's a pretty cool kit but it's been taking a bit more work than expected to get the scale right for 40K. It's not quite as wide as I'd prefer so I'm a bit limited in where I can put crew.

Thanks for the model. I've been there where you have this 90% great thing, but one aspect is off. I suspect you'l figure it our and I'm hoping to see the results. Maybe it needs fighting platforms off the side, like the AA platforms on WWII Aircraft carriers? Or even just walkways.

I was thinking about doing fighting platforms and such but I decided that it would be a lot of effort and the final result probably wouldn't look that good. There are a few things that aren't going to be perfect but I figured it'll be far less noticeable to leave it as is rather than do some hack job trying to make it work.

edwardmyst wrote:
Great bit of conversion and fluff for it. Love these types of projects. Hope to see more of it. What model is the hull from? Some old freighter model?

Looks like a WWII Flower-class escort ship.

The only reason I know this is because of Captain Brown's thread on building one and doing a LOT of extra detail work on it.

EDIT: Ninja'd...

After quite the wait to get the bits from Anvil, I have the crew pretty much assembled:

Bridge: Includes the skipper, stubber gunner, and spotter. I'd love to add another guy talking on the vox using the scion hand holding the telephone but I can't figure out how to do it without just glueing the armored arm onto the model which wouldn't match the aesthetic. Any ideas?

Forward: Includes heavy bolter gunner, A gunner, lasgunner, and grenadier (converted the victoria miniatures arms to hold an IG grenade launcher that has subsequently rolled off the table, hence him being armless at the moment. I will find it though!)

Aft: 2 lasgunners (mostly shirtless to show how they rushed on deck when the alarm sounded even though they were resting below) and 2 ammo bearers. Not 100% sure where the ammo bearers will end up on the boat, probably won't be finalized until after they're painted.

Just have a few more random bits to add to the boat like brass cases of spent rounds and such.

One of the frustrating things about GW weapons is that the sizes of the models are ALL over the place. Depending on what model it's for, an autocannon can be 50% than another autocannon. There is a corresponding change in the size of the ammo boxes used which absolutely should not be the case. I was planning on using some of the spare autocannon ammo boxes I have lying around to indicate ready reloads for the forward autocannons but they are much larger than the ammo boxes on the autocannons themselves and I'm afraid they would look weird next to it. I really wish GW would standardize weapon sizes across models they way they would actually have to be - it would make conversions easier and I have to imagine it would made designing the models themselves easier from the get-go.

Anyways, let me know what you think and if you have any ideas about how I can get that scion telephone to work!

This is the kind of project that I love to see! I'm not sure about the telephone, I haven't really seen enough of that model in person to judge.

Great concept. Love it.