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Hello! This is literally my second post here!

I'm part of the wave of people who spent this year cooped up in an apartment and finally decided they needed a hobby. Like some others, I chose to pick up WH40k. In an undoubtedly clever move, I decided to skip past all the preliminary stuff about building a standard army and (re)learning the basics of painting and modeling- I briefly tried to make a Cadian force 12 years ago, which is the last time I did any hobbying- and instead immediately run headlong into making some sort of flying rodent gak kitbash/conversion army.

In this case, I figured I wanted to make some sort of American pastiche- not of WWII, but of the later 19th century, taking a little bit from the American Civil War all the way to WWI. I only started last month, but I've already learned a lot!



I've learned that I still don't know how to properly thin my paints!




I've learned that I don't know how to take a well-lit and well-focused picture!




I've learned that I feel bad about the painting quality in this picture more and more every time I look at it!




And I've learned that I don't know how to delicately sculpt with green stuff!


Clearly, there's nowhere to go but up from here.

Thanks all! I'll try what I can to implement your tips-- natural lighting for photographs is tricky, because I live in Stockholm and daylight is just a myth during the wintertime.

The models themselves are primarily based on Wargames Atlantic's German Infantry 1916-1918 kit- part of the impetus behind this was trying to actually make cheaper guardsmen, and that kit offers a pretty decent price per soldier. On top of that, I got sets of pewter American Civil War heads from Steve Barber Models (£3.60 for a dozen sounded decent to me), and then I've scavenged here and there for lasgun bits. Some soldiers use the WWI German Infantry arms, with lasguns variously hacked on, because I managed to buy only half a set of lasgun arms once.

Honestly, I'm fine with some guardsmen having shoulderpads and others not- makes it easier to sort them into different squads. If I get enough figures without shoulderpads, they might even end up being treated as conscripts.

Let's say this first guys are Learning Experiences.


Pipe Soldier has become a testbed for stuff. He's the first one to get some crude basing done, and I also tried applying Agrax Earthshade to his khaki uniform- but I found the resulting shadows too harsh, and tried lightly brushing more khaki on top to mitigate the wash, which kind of made things a little messy. The basing also got sloppy because the first coat clumped together too much, leaving bare areas of the base just sitting there, so I felt compelled to go back and apply more of the citadel textured paint- Armageddon Dunes in this case- in the bare areas, which then sort of just piled up everywhere. :S





Only after this soldier started being painted did I notice the weird glue... cruft near his neck. How do you guys deal with aberrations that only become apparent well after priming and painting's begun?




The sentinel is also definitely a Learning Experience. I never got that putty satisfactorily smoothed out, although I feel like it can be partially waved away as sloppy welding. I also clearly messed up the leg joints and missed smoothing out moulding lines at several points which, hmm. This model can be used in battles, no doubt, but future sentinels will hopefully be better centerpieces than this one.

Speaking of that, I used a 1:48 scale Model T as the source for the kitbashed parts. Would a 1:35 scale model work better in the future? If the hood transitioned more smoothly to the sentinel cab- and I'd like to keep at least part of the original cab there so I can still easily slap in weapons and use the ball-and-cup section to connect the upper structure to the legs- that might look a bit more elegant than the current setup.




I do enjoy the kitbashing, but good heavens this painting needs improvement.


edit: unrelated, but why the dink does the forum sometimes flag me as Swedish, and sometimes as Norwegian? Google Maps sometimes sees my ip and thinks I'm as far away as Gotland, but I've never seen my connection get confused as something Norwegian before.

I've done a smidgen more work, mostly trying to actually complete some infantry:

First, I think the main command squad's more-or-less done. I've been sloppy with the citadel slap-on terrain, but oh well:




And, on a lark, I decided to try using the Frostgrave female soldiers kit to make some guardswomen and see how that works:



I'm thinking the coats in the Frostgrave can be treated as buckskin coats with a little finangling. Main issue is the lack of correct hats-- I haven't been able to find anywhere that offers 28mm female heads wearing kepis. Haven't even found any that sell, like, 28mm cowgirl heads. Best I've been able to do is take the separate kepis from Perry Miniatures Civil War plastic kits, lobotomize hat-less heads, and see how well they fit:



ehhhhhh

tzurk wrote:Have you played with any washes yet? I feel like a solid brown wash all over would really tie these guys together, dirty them up a bit, and bring out some detail all in one step.

Not Online!!! wrote:Another thing, do you use washes?

I've tried a bit, although I'm still not entirely happy with what I got. I tried working out a system with that second shovel-carrying soldier I posted above:



He's got two coats of very-watered-down Vallejo Khaki Grey on his jacket, and then got Citadel's Agrax Earthshade applied to his jacket and his skin. I also watered down some dark blue paint from Panduro Hobby and tried washing his pants with that. I didn't actually want the jacket to look that dirty tbh- shadows are nice, but I wanted his coat to look more cleanish than what it ended up as.

Last month's been busy with more experiments!


First, I tried to hack some heavy weapons teams in Perry Miniatures' American Civil War artillery sets. I'm not entirely happy with how I tried to fit this lascannon onto the carriage through vigorous whittling, but bit of green stuff and paint should tidy that up a bit, right?




I also got my hands on some Tempestus Scion bit and combined them with infantry models from Wargames Atlantic's Les Grognards box, plus kepis from the same Perry Miniatures box, to make some more Civil War-ish Scions.




Lastly... did you know that O-gauge model trains are roughly the same width as the hull of a Leman Russ?

You can have a Sentinel painted any color that you want, so long as it's black.

It was originally part of the plan when I started getting back into 40k, but then I looked into the current codex and it looks like rough riders are being phased out, or at least relegated to some index entries in the back of the codex this edition. I'd love to have rough riders, but no matter how wild the conversions here end up being I want them to be kosher with current rules and fieldable, so I can play against people and cackle like a madman as I deploy everything.

 PaddyMick wrote:
The new vehicles look great. I'm looking forward to see what you do for a chimera (wagon or something?). Paint job looks good. I have found just a light tone all over wash works for me, to kinda tie it all together.

I hadn't really thought about what to do for a chimera... maybe if I can get my hands on an O-gauge doodlebug, I could slap chimera treads on it, put the chimera turret up top, and some guns sticking out of windows?

Using a shortened version of this as a base:


Or, gak, use an o-gauge caboose and slap the front of the chimera onto it (and the treads), but save everything else, and treat the cupola as a fixed turret proxy. Oh, choices, choices...