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Cant wait to see more!

Sorry guys, I admit I have been lazy updating it... These minis were built last summer, and I haven't worked on them since...

Still, here are the pics...

Penal Legion Squad:



Some may notice there are more than 10 guys (and one of them is missing lol), but when I went for my summer vacations, I just felt like giving like to each and every crazy idea I was having...

I wanted to get the feel of Schaeffer's Last Chancers, each with an strong personality & unique gear, which could cause problems with WYSIWYG, but hey, I hope my opponents will get the "those freakin' maniacs over there? Oh, no worries, they just have lasguns & a CCW..."

Some of them are quite... meh (?), so feel free to tell which of them you dislike... It'll help me in my choice for a colour scheme test mini lol!!!

Here they are :

"Himeros" :


Nicknamed after a Tranch hermaphrodite deity of sexual desire. The best-looking soldier in his company, successful with women, and filled with vanity and patronizing behaviour. He used to pray daily for always having "the chance to see a beautiful face a day", until the day nightmare was unleashed on Tranch. On that day, a playful Slaanesh daemon heard his prayers, and blessed his fervor by granting him the face of his favourite deity, Himeros, telling him that a simple mirror was all he would ever need to see a beautiful face. Branded as a mutant by his comrades, he was subsequently sentenced to serve in a penal legion.

"Willow" :


Infected by a vegetal lifeform on Lehyde Ten during a failed colonization mission, "Willow" is now kept under close scrutiny by a Mechanicum Magos Biologis, who is in charge of gathering data of the parasite that has taken over the subject's right arm, and is expanding towards his chest. The first analyses having proved a major increase in pain resistance in the subject, he was assigned to a penal legion, due to the extreme death rate, thus ensuring the secrecy of the study. One of the other visual side effects of the parasite is that he is constantly weeping. This was key to his baptism as "subject Weeping Willow", or "Willow".

"Butcher Jack" :


An esteemed and skillful combat medic from the 2nd Tranch Reserve Regiment, "The Jackals", Lt. Jack Arson got sentenced to death after an incident with the regiment's commanding officer. Caught in an ambush by mutant followers of Nurgle in the Adrax Swamp, the colonel had lost a chump of his left calf to a Nurgling bite. Without any suitable medical equipment left, "Doc Jack" had no choice but use both the officer's chainsword and cigar to respectively amputate his leg and cauterize the wound. He should have been lauded for his reaction, but the colonel was too proud to admit the Doc had saved his life, instead reporting him to the regimental commissar for "dubious enthusiasm in butchering his commanding officer". On the day after his assignment to the penal legion, the colonel's body was found in his command Chimera, chopped in seven parts. The investigation carried out by the commissars never found any clue as to who was the murderer.

"Mad Sarge" :


A maniac who has seen his whole squad slaughtered by an angry mob in Hive Gorgon. As their sergeant, he was at the company HQ for orders when his squad's position was overrun. Stricken with shame and grief for "forsaking his boys", he was quickly deemed unfit for service due to mental disorders, and assigned to the penal legions to allow him to end his duty with honour and glory. Dauntless and seemingly eager to die, he roams the battlefield bellowing orders to his long dead squadmates, issuing coordination elements over his ever-silent vox-net, and firing wildly to cover the ghosts of his heavy weapon team.

"ICBM" :


ICBM (Inter-Continental BowMan) likes to think he's the best bowman on all TRANCH - which may well be true, since he's probably the only human being still using a bow on this world. He earned his callsign (and legionnaire status) after a long night he spent drinking and bragging about how he had won the Tranch Intercontinental Archery Contest in 991M41, but failed to prove his skills when he unfortunately killed his sergeant with his bow.

"Bling" :


When a radical Inquisitor searched a battlefield medicae for wounded "volunteers" in the service of the Holy Inquisition, Pfc. Blingersky saw this as a perfect opportunity to climb the arduous ladder of merits faster than expected. His overconfidence and habit of showing off actually seemed to fit the Inquisitor's experiments : grafting an eldar gauntlet to a human being. The operation was a partial success : "Bling" did not die, and, over time, managed slowly move his arm and even control his fingers. Understanding he had been duped and that he had little chance to make it out alive, he escaped the Inquisitorial fortress, only to be captured soon after by a PDF squad, who had him reported as a "desertor". Unwilling to reveal his scheme and knowing the fate that awaited all "desertors", the Inquisitor watched from the shadows as his former "experience" was sent to the penal legions, which would undoubtedly lead to his death.

"Jugger" :


An ex-soldier from the Kreta Hive Peace Corps assault squadron, he thought his skills would be more useful if used against "the real enemies of the Imperium". Much to the awe of his former comrades, he volunteered for the Tranch Penal Legions, hoping this would lead him across the stars, in daunting battles against horrendous Xenos and filthy mutants. Ironically, his very skills in brutal assaults in urban environment were deemed too useful to be wasted, and he was assigned to the units fighting the growing rebellions on Tranch. His heavily modified assault armour and deadly shotgun "Dragonfire", as well as his reckless demeanour, both owned him his callsign "Juggernaught", or "Jugger"... Much to his liking.

"Dead Already" :


Every penal legion has a bunch of doomsayers and fanatics. They are of great use to the enforcers, who use them as they are : sentient bombs with suicidal tendencies. They have learned not to overlook the psychological effect caused by wailing madmen charging the enemy, packed with explosives and grenades.

"Frog" :


Little is known about "Frog", and that situation seems to suit him well. The fragmentary reports state that he was a member of an underwater-warfare unit, employed by the Adeptus Astartes on the Mortressa Death World. Even his enforcer, "Flayer", hasn't been made aware of the circumstances which led to his assignment to his squad, but his proficiency at killing with his bolt-rifle largely outweighs this.

"Tankbuster" :


Formerly known as Pfc. Trent, specialist in demolitions. While fighting a rebellion in Hive Tartarus, he got separated from his squad and managed to survive for two weeks on his own, inside the rebels' defensive layout, before rallying the loyal forces. Weak and feverish, he told his sergeant he had had a vision, where he was felling an Eldar Revenant Titan with a fusion bomb, whose serial number matched the one he had been issued a month ago. Knowing full well the effects of a harsh battle trauma, his squad leader cast aside his ramblings and handed him to the medics. Only during their next mission did he realize his trooper was clinging to his vision : Trent refused to "waste" his bomb to destroy a rebel Chimera, claiming he and the device had a higher destiny to fulfill. His disobedience indirectly caused the death of two of his squadmates; and, even though he later disabled the APC by lobbing a grenade in the pilot's hatch, he was sentenced to assignment in the penal legions for "cowardice in front of the enemy and jeopardy of his squad". Eversince, "Tankbuster" Trent has proven his his knack for anti-armour warfare on more than one occasion. His incredible feats include : destroying a Leman Russ tank by throwing an overheated lasgun charge pack into its exhaust pipes ; tearing open a Killa Kan hatch with his combat knife and slicing open the grot pilot's throat ; climbing a Sentinel's leg to blankpoint shoot the rebel pilot ; shattering a Fire Prism's crystal while it was charging up with a heavy stubber, resulting in a catastrophic chain reaction which destroyed two of the sleek Eldar crafts. Worthy of note is the fact that all this mayhem was wrought without Magdalena, his beloved fusion bomb, that he always keeps close to him and ready to complete their destiny.

"Banshee" :



Last member of a long lost Rogue Trader retinue, "Banshee" is rumoured to have singlehandedly avenged his master's death at the hands of an Eldar Exarch. His voice is seldom heard apart from when he's on the battlefield, where it is said his battle shriek can freeze the opponent's blood in his veins.

Lastly, Capt. Tybalt "Flayer" Gruul :


A grim, fearless enforcer, Capt. Tybalt GRUUL lost most of his face during a Necron attack on his company outpost, on the distant world of Ishmael. Refusing any augmetic implant, he instead gave the order to be grafted with the metallic face of the very Necron warrior that had maimed him, and whose skull he had painstakingly cut off with his bayonet. Considered a heretic, he then volunteered for the Penal Legion, to prove he could "turn these cowards and scumbags into warriors".
Those insane enough not to run - and get shot - from him, undoubtedly found their place in the Penal Legion.

Pheww... I hadn't intended on transcribing all their fluff, but now that it's here...

Thanks for looking!

Nice reading, thank you.

Nice fluff, cool models I miss those old last chancer's with their variety of gear.

yeah great stuff and fluff, i love it!

i like them, def the fluff as well! great work

Those are just really cool Yggs... love the stories that go with them.

Great models! Nice storyline as well, I can see that you have put a fair amount of thought into them. Keep it up!

Wow, that's great! Each model and all the fluffy bits about them. Is it just me or are a... most of the torsos are small, or rather, the heads too big. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I think it actually works, it's just playing with my head.

Where are those torsos from? I figure they are from the fantasy line, but what?

Wow, thank you guys for the nice comments!!!

@Good Green : yes, some of them seem to have weird proportions...

The torsos are the leftovers from the Flagellant bodies I cut in half to get the legs on my troopers... So I had a pile of unused torsos strapped with a heavy collar, and thought : what king of troops have collars? Yes, Penal Legion Squads and their explosive collars!!! I had found some use to those torsos!!!

UPDATES:

The remainder of the first squad (where you can see the lower half of the Flagellant bodies) :



I still have to model the Sergeant, the Weapon Specialist (I still have to determine which weapon he'll be wielding) and the Missile Launcher operator. Saving the best for last eh!

Some individual shots...

Trp. Abderus :



Yes, he's about to throw a grenade, and yes, he lost one of his fingers...

Trp. Anaxo :



Signals operator.

Trp. Krill :



Designator for the Missile Launcher.

And, my favourite of the bunch :

Cpl. Kretheus :



Yes, my guys love their grenades...

Haven't done much work regarding fluff, but I'm pretty happy with them... One day, I'll be painting them, I swear...

They look great Yggs... don't remember the last time I saw such creative building work with guardsmen based troops. Given how fine the work was you did on my marine... I'm really looking forward to seeing these boys start to get painted up!

Gitsplitta wrote:...don't remember the last time I saw such creative building work with guardsmen based troops.

I couldn't say it in a better way. Your models are a proof that guardsmen are more interesting than I thought. Great job, as usual!

Really nice guard, loving the kitbashing. The army is going to look seriously dark and atmospheric when painted to your excellent standard

I LOVE the modified Tau Helmet on "Frog". It looks really good. They are all very creative, I cannot wait to see paint on 'em!

_Tim?

Very nice stuff. I look forward to them being all finshed and painted.

Just a question: are they Nurgle followers? I see the 3 triangle dots everywhere, and they are very mutated, though you said that Willow was being watched by the Magos Biologist, which I believe is an Imperial Organisation.

Anyway, cool stuff.

I was wondering about the dots as well, is a very familiar symbol in an army that I'm working on...

Stunning work! I absolutely love "Guard Gone Wrong" armies. Takes me back to my Genestealer Cult days, and later on Necromunda and Chaos Cultists. No amount of conversion was too much, wargear was different from model to model, but a strong thematic thread tying them all together. It worked very well.

Again I am awed by the work you do. Really looking forward to seeing what you do next.

Stuning work! Also have to steal the conversion with the tau helmet on one dude. Looks alot like the masks the current dark eldar have, and it's awesome!

simply awesome nothing more nothing less...
love too see them getting some paint.
my own guard have bright green and dhebe stone/bleached bone armour. the vehicle (only one valkery) will get a bright green top and the same dhebe stone/bleached bone combo underneath kind of like snakes. an honouring too Jack the snake

Gitsplitta wrote:They look great Yggs... don't remember the last time I saw such creative building work with guardsmen based troops. Given how fine the work was you did on my marine... I'm really looking forward to seeing these boys start to get painted up!

Hyenajoe wrote:

Gitsplitta wrote:...don't remember the last time I saw such creative building work with guardsmen based troops.

I couldn't say it in a better way. Your models are a proof that guardsmen are more interesting than I thought. Great job, as usual!

BLACKHAND wrote:Really nice guard, loving the kitbashing. The army is going to look seriously dark and atmospheric when painted to your excellent standard

[plus all paint-related comments :]

Wow, wow, wow, you almost managed you have me blush guys!!! Oh, ok, you did it...

I hadn't planned on getting to paint them soon (I already have my Skaven & CSM to work on before), but if the community pressure gets too high, I might be tempted to give it a shot...

Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:I LOVE the modified Tau Helmet on "Frog". It looks really good. _Tim?

Rose_Mountainz wrote:Stuning work! Also have to steal the conversion with the tau helmet on one dude. Looks alot like the masks the current dark eldar have, and it's awesome!

Tau Helmet : yeah, I don't know how it manages not to look that Tau-ish... I didn't strap the antenna on, filed away the optics, added the 3 dots... maybe that's enough to break the Tau look...
Anyway, feel free to steal this!!!

And, Rose_Mountainz : I've had my eyes on the DE masks as well for this army, I'm pretty sure they'd look good... I've ordered a few on the internet, we'll see when I get them!

Grimm wrote:Just a question: are they Nurgle followers? I see the 3 triangle dots everywhere, and they are very mutated, though you said that Willow was being watched by the Magos Biologist, which I believe is an Imperial Organisation.

Skalk Bloodaxe wrote:I was wondering about the dots as well, is a very familiar symbol in an army that I'm working on...

Again I am awed by the work you do. Really looking forward to seeing what you do next.

Erh... Yes, most of them fell to the loving clutch of Papa Nurgle...

I haven't written down anything here about the fluff of this army, for most of it is still whirling in my head.

The general background is on the Tranch world, in the Calixis sector (the setting of the Dark Heresy RPG). In the rulebook, Tranch in only described in a few words, where they only mention the planet is home to an everlasting civil war between the imperial loyalists and a rebellious uprising of mutants. In the Inquisitorial's handbook, there are also a few lines on Tranch, stating that imperial forces from all the sector are deployed on the planet, and those who survive their "tour" on the planet come back jaded & forever marked by what they saw and had to fight down there...

How much grimdark is that?

From this, I imagined that chaotic forces would also be attracted to Tranch to prove their worth to their dark masters, and that some of the mutants would have turned to one of the Ruinous Powers a long, long time ago...

I also have my idea about how the conflict escalated into an all-out war, but I'd like to keep it a surprise until I find a way to write it down properly.. with enough drama & grimdark infused in it!

As for the "imperial-sided" penal legion, it might be possible for some factions (even some Magos Biologis), to turn from their original beliefs & side with the enemy...

Some of the renegades also have more links with Slaanesh than Nurgle, as I want to show the complexity of the forces involved, and the different alignments within... (and, for those who caught the detail : "Himeros" ' gun is an old "Eldar lasgun"!!! What better link with Slaanesh ha ha ha?!?)
Plus I love those Daemonette heads!

fatty wrote:my own guard have bright green and dhebe stone/bleached bone armour. the vehicle (only one valkery) will get a bright green top and the same dhebe stone/bleached bone combo underneath kind of like snakes. an honouring too Jack the snake

As in "Snake!!! Snake!?!? Snaaaaaaaaake!!!!" ???

As for the colours, I'm still debating on them as well...

The bone + red I used on my test Plague Marine seems quite nice :




But the bone + green also appeals to me, especially when I see some really nice minis such as :

[guys, I just hope you won't mind me showing your minis on my thread... It's for the Greater Good uh]

Nemissary's :


or lifeofshan's :


or maybe yours ? (feel free post a pic if you have some!!!)

I'm still pondering, so...

Anyway, thanks for the support guys!!!

Yggdrasil wrote: And, Rose_Mountainz : I've had my eyes on the DE masks as well for this army, I'm pretty sure they'd look good... I've ordered a few on the internet, we'll see when I get them!

Could you tell me where you've ordered them? (it's for my Emperor's children)
Thanks!

i will post a pic when i am done with the valkery.

Lol! Woundlickers!
did my claws wound you? here! let me lick it better!

Looks great so far!

M.K

'Cpl Kritheus' and 'Himeros' are my favourite of the models by a longshot. The rest are all decent but the two i mention are oozing with character.

@fatty : I'm eager to see it!

@ M.K. : Thanks! That name sprung unexpectedly to my mind, but it sounds too cool to forget it lol!

@ Perkustin : Thank you sir.

Actually, that's quite funny. Indeed, I may not have mentioned it but I (roughly) posted the troopers in each squad from least to most favourite (it's a bit hard to tell for some of them).

So, if you check again :
- the one I like the least among the Penal Legionnaires is "Himeros";
- the one I prefer in the regular "Guardsmen" squad is "Kretheus".

In other words, YOU prefer both my least & most favourite models...

Am I the only one to think this is funny (in a "weird" kind of way)?

Blown away by the character in each penal legionnaire. I've also been using split torsos and legs from the flagellants for my chaos cultists and zombies in my nurgle traitor guard.

I'm assuming you'll be counting the different wargear as being all lasguns?

Your work is full of new inspiration for me Please continue and get painting!

Sure, I guess no one will object to them being all fitted with different stuff, that will all count as "lasguns"...
Not WYSIWYG, but GW's official Penal Legions (Schaeffer's Last Chancers) aren't either.

I'll have a look at you blog for sure...

Thanks for the kind comment... Each single one of them has cost me hours rampaging through my bitz boxes to find the one piece that would make it different from the others, so I'm pleased to see those people who notice!

Nice work. In my Dark Heresy campaign, we had a mission on Tranch. Your brief fluff is what pulled me in.

Really good stuff here what parts did you use for "Jugger".

samwellfrm wrote:Nice work. In my Dark Heresy campaign, we had a mission on Tranch. Your brief fluff is what pulled me in.

Nice to hear!

What part of the fluff did inspire you?

Llamahead wrote:Really good stuff here what parts did you use for "Jugger".

Erh... That was some time ago, but I think it is something like :
- Tau Fire Warrior legs with VC Zombie feet,
- Tau Fire Warrior torso,
- Cadian Command Power fist, holding a Forge World Elysian flamer cut so as to look like a shotgun,
- Forge World Renegades arm with blade, with the blade cut off and a shield made of a Tau Fire Warrior shoulder pad,
- Cadian head with Cadian Command rebreather,
- Bass strings,
- Some Cadian gear (waterbottle / magazine pouch / knife),
- erh, no... That's about all...

So its a very heavily armoured and chipped Tau Fire Warrior as the base. Cool might use that in future for some elite techy guard.