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Hi Dakka,

Like many, I've decided to start a blog on here of my work, both to get some much needed C&C and to keep me going! It's going to be a fluffy Tallarn Imperial Guard army with all the trimmings, as well as a Goff Ork horde. As a long time lurker who has only just started posting, this represents a lot of Firsts for me- first time taking photos, first time posting photos, first time starting a thread... so if any of these go t**s up as is likely, apologies in advance!

First a bit of background. I started 40k the day 3rd Edition came out (just a wee lad then, not a 4th year physics student), and me and my twin came home with a basilisk and the Tallarn boxed set (£17 each, those were the days). We amassed quite a large, if horribly painted (dunk 'em in painty gunk n' use 'em) Tallarn army: 40 men in infantry sqauds (each with a special and heavy weapon... I did not do subltey when I was small, I did firepower), Anti-tank squad, Fire Support Squad, Mortar Squad, Tallarn Rough Riders, and two special-weapon-loaded command squads with the Tallarn Lieutenant and Captain Al'Rahem (and a pretty sweet converted standard bearer). Also were Ratlings, 10 Stormies, 4 2nd Ed Ogryns, Tanks... I stopped doing 40k roundabout when 4th Ed came out.

When I got back into 40k last year I looked sadly at the shambles that was the Tallarns. Never having actually painted anything properly before (Bro did most of the slapdash gunk-spray previously) I wanted to start my own army. Being broke, I bought Black Reach, flogged the Mehrines, and started orks.

A year on, I realised how much I loved the tallarns. Having painted Black Reach and a Trukk, and feeling that I'd got the hang of the basics, I'm going back to them. Using some remenants left over and buying a few things there are now 10x rough riders and 6 infantry squads, as well as a Primaris Psyker to lead 'em and the two tallarn casulties off ebay (I now have every non-FW Tallarn model, Woop!). I stripped a squad of old paint with brake fluid and spent a month painting 'em up. So with no further ado, I present squad 1 of 1st platoon of the Tallarn Think-of-a-Number... 77th.

Group shot


Rear View


Autocannon Team


Wasn't sure if the plate on the back of the gun was a targeting screen or not- so it got a cross-hair, and it is now


A few of the troopers:


Photography needs some work... shadows present, and the shading on the white's been lost... hmph..






As I said, C&C or any questions welcome! I used washes for the first time on these, as well as the first time mixing paint, but I'm pretty happy how they came out. Human skin is a bit harder than ork skin, too!

Although I don't have too much time (Major topic finals in January, eek!) I'm gonna armies alternate... a squad of orks, a squad of guard. I'm currently working on some grots, and then after that I'll paint up another 14 Guardsmen along with Lieutenant Israel, Al'Rahem's right hand man. For the Tallarns, I'm going to go alllllllll the infantry, HW and command, then the rough riders, then other stuff (forge world tallarn sentinals will be good'n fluffy).

I'll post up my orks when I have the time... I think they need a lot more feedback than these guys, since they represent all the painting-learning I've ever got... I want to game with these guys too so I might put up the bare-bones list at some point, for some ideas.

Ta!

Really nice stuff here. The sky blue tassles on the head scarfs and knife hilt really sets the models off.

One thing though... i find the skin a bit pink... espescially for desert folk.

Really great though.

FTL


Automatically Appended Next Post:
P.s. Have you seen the Forgeworld Tallarns? They are exquisite scuplts.

FTL

i love it the white really stands out yet blends in somehow how odd iss that anyway i love it well done

Thanks a lot! Cheers!

I was going for a lightly tanned Caucasian skin tone rather than something darker and more arabic- thats because these guys have a bit of influence from the way GW did their 'Eavy Metal tallarns. It's a faily dark pink with a hint of yellow where i've pulled it off properly- I'll get it looking better as I paint more.

What I'm trying to do is basecoat tallarn flesh, then ogryn flesh wash, then layer tallarn flesh (arms only), then highlights/layers as appropriate: 50:50 dwarf flesh-bleached bone, then add more bleached bone and repeat, and so on. How well I'm pulling this off... well...

The forge world tallarns are cool, but they dont fit well with the original metal models- They have smaller shoulder pads, a backpack, a completely different gun... in addition they only do the heavy weapons teams, and I have more than enough of those! I will pick up the tank commander and some sentinals though

Moonshine, the white was really easy. The key is Asumen Blue wash. Just white primer, then a wash of watered down Asumen blue, then highlight skull white. If it needs more work, touch up or work on shadows with mixes of skull white and the blue wash (very much like shadow grey). I really recommend this wash for doing clean, white fabric- much easier than highlighting up from grey!

Really good stuff. Found my way here from the ig regiments poll. Love the tallarn. And it's painted really well, don't know why your gallery ratings are so low. You've got a few 7s and 8s from me anyways.

 Arclaw wrote:
feeling that I'd got the hang of the basics

Uh, yeah. I'd say you've got the hang of more than just the basics, my friend The Tallarn 77th are looking great! Looking forward to more updates!

Subbed for sure!
Rawson

Those are looking really nice, I like that mustard-y color on their cloaks

Man, painting all those folds of clothing must have taken forever! They look great!

Maybe try doing a glow effect on the sergeants plasma pistol?

seanm222 wrote:
Maybe try doing a glow effect on the sergeants plasma pistol?

Second that! The plain white looks a bit off...

Wow, its ages since I posted anything in here... I totally missed people posting in here a while back, it seems. The Tallarns are back on after a long period of focusing on my Orks! It feels really good to be working on these guys, I should have done it sooner.

So far I've got 15 Tallarns painted up, including the guy as my avatar. I'm batch painting another 10 at the moment and I'm well into a FW Tallarn sentinel. In addition I've done loads of other stuff... stripping down a command section, building a chimera and decking it out with stowage, and scratch building an officer based on the guy at the front of this pic (web link):

http://images.wikia.com/warhammer40k/images/3/3b/Tallarn_Artillery.jpg

I'm not so happy with how he turned out. It would really have helped if I'd seen that version of the picture beforehand, since I was going from an old grainy version that had his bottom half cut off. Bah).

I've gone back over some of the guys posted earlier in this thread, in particular the sergeant. His plasma pistol looks a lot cooler now- far more blue and glowy- and I got rid of the odd stray mould line here and there. General touch-up stuff.

I'll try and post some pics sometime soon!

Here's some more Tallarn pics! I've posted these in the showcase before in various threads, but I might as well add them here too until I take pics of my most recent stuff.











I'm now up to 20 guardsmen with another 5 nearly finished. After all this time, a platoon! I did paint up a Commissar last week too, which was a refreshing change of pace from Ork boyz and Tallarn troopers! I'll finish off the first Sentinel before too long as well. I really have to decide on a colour scheme for the Sentinels... mainly whether or not to do the weapons cowling in green or yellow, what colours to do the canopy (brown?)... camo or no camo...

(Oh and by the way, the number changed from 77th to 177th... why? Because raising hundreds of regiments over thousands of years is that much more grimdark, that's why!)

Nicely done, my friend! I love the attention to detail and how you made their bases match the board.

So, I've been working on these again... Finished the first sentinel at the weekend. The current strength is one 25-man platoon, the sentinel and a commissar. I've also done some repainting on the existing models following feedback- the gold braid tags on some of the infantry is now in a NMM style to better represent gold fabric, and I've made some of the eyes less suprised! The plasma pistol sergeant also has now got far more blue shaded ribbing on his pistol. Oh the details...

Next up (after some stormboyz) will be to beef up the platoon into 35 regulars and paint more autocannons and missile launchers to get 2 heavy weapon squads, and do the other two sentinels. After that, I'll be a little under half done with the line troops!

There's a Basilisk coming at some point as well- it's just bascoated at the moment!

Real nice paint job man, realistic pallette on the men and scenery.

Pics of the the army so farf! The 177th are roughly up to battleforce strength now.













Next up: More infantry, more Sentinels, and a Basilisk!

Oh, I LOVE these!

great job all around.

Makes me want to dig out my 60 lb. box of Tallarns and give 'em a go!

Love these - I had a Tallarn army back in the day, and these lovely models are making me regret selling it

The Sentinel is particularly great - love the weathering effect.

That Commissar looks like he might get a bit warm in the desert sun, but I expect he feels his suffering pleases the Emperor

Nice stuff, not often a Tallarn army comes up, let alone one this good. The sentinel looks awesome. Keep it up.

Cheers guys! Great to have good feedback!

I will be keeping it up since I have a lot more to do, this is much less than a third of the Tallarn models I've got- not including the tanks! They'll be on hold for a few months though while I paint some Infinity (and some stormboyz).

The Commissar probably is pretty hot!... I guess he's just man enough to take it... I thought about making the coat white or yellow, but went for the classic scheme in the end.

Love seeing these old models and you've really done them justice! BRAVO!

The Sentinale is my favorite. Lets pray GW releases some of the old regiments in improved plastics some time soon, ie. when the new codex comes out next year!

Migs

Nice job, these look fantastic, and your painting skill is more than adequate–you can paint the pupils of their eyes! Very impressive. I've always been a big fan of the Tallarn models, I plan on starting a Tallarn force soon myself, based around Al'rahem, they can be the daring Tallarn company that swoops in from reserves and saves my Cadian force ( or at least that's my excuse for the rest of my force not being Tallarn.)

Cor, lovely! This is a beautiful looking army. I especially like the canopy and basing on the Sentinel (is the pilot a FW heavy weapon gunner?) – lovely touches that really sets the vehicle in the army. The officer looks intriguing, too – any chance of a closeup?

The paintjob over the whole force is crisp, clean and classic; and is only looking better as the army grows

If you get fed up of the two sergeant sculpts, have you considered converting the autocannon loader? I always though he'd be a good candidate for conversion.

Great stuff!

That's enough to get me to rethink selling/trading off my Tallarn!

Valete,

JohnS

Tallerns! There are not enough of these lovelies in the world! Really loving what you’ve done, great paintjob on some great models, hats off for doing them justice.

amazing army! Well done! I cant wait to see more

 cygnnus wrote:
Great stuff!

That's enough to get me to rethink selling/trading off my Tallarn!

Valete,

JohnS

Well if you do end up selling or trading them pm me please, I'm looking to get my hands on some Tallarn my self.

Wow, I've left this blog alone for a while so I'm kind of suprised to find so many posts on it

migsula wrote:Love seeing these old models and you've really done them justice! BRAVO!

The Sentinale is my favorite. Lets pray GW releases some of the old regiments in improved plastics some time soon, ie. when the new codex comes out next year!

Migs

Amen to that! I don't have too many hopes for a new range of plastics though. There were rumours of new Steel Legion, but these seem to have died down.

walkiflalka wrote:Nice job, these look fantastic, and your painting skill is more than adequate–you can paint the pupils of their eyes! Very impressive. I've always been a big fan of the Tallarn models, I plan on starting a Tallarn force soon myself, based around Al'rahem, they can be the daring Tallarn company that swoops in from reserves and saves my Cadian force ( or at least that's my excuse for the rest of my force not being Tallarn.)

That was the initial idea for these, to have them backing up my brother's Cadians. I'm going straight for a full army now though!

Apologist wrote:Cor, lovely! This is a beautiful looking army. I especially like the canopy and basing on the Sentinel (is the pilot a FW heavy weapon gunner?) – lovely touches that really sets the vehicle in the army. The officer looks intriguing, too – any chance of a closeup?

The paintjob over the whole force is crisp, clean and classic; and is only looking better as the army grows

If you get fed up of the two sergeant sculpts, have you considered converting the autocannon loader? I always though he'd be a good candidate for conversion.

Cheers! Glad you like the sentinel. I had real trouble deciding how to do it! There are two more to come.

The pilot and canopy are FW, but not from the heavy weapons troopers. FW actually used to sell a Tallarn sentinel kit, and this is that. If you look closely there is also a dust filter on the engine, and the feet are super-large to prevent sinking into the sand.

The officer... If you mean the guy with the blue cloak, I kind of have a love-hate relationship with him... He's a greenstuff/kitbash based on the original Basilisk box art. I might have another go at him at some point, but I'll try and take a closeup next time the camera is out.

Finally, regarding converting the metal autocannon loader.. I haven't thought about using him as a sergeant... but I've seen people replace the cannon magazine with a medi-kit, maybe that's something to think about?!

cygnnus wrote:Great stuff!

That's enough to get me to rethink selling/trading off my Tallarn!

Valete,

JohnS

TheFireDrake wrote:Tallerns! There are not enough of these lovelies in the world! Really loving what you’ve done, great paintjob on some great models, hats off for doing them justice.

swampyturtle wrote:amazing army! Well done! I cant wait to see more

Cheers! Lots of encouragement to keep at it, painting an army like this is daunting!

walkiflalka wrote:

 cygnnus wrote:
Great stuff!

That's enough to get me to rethink selling/trading off my Tallarn!

Valete,

JohnS

Well if you do end up selling or trading them pm me please, I'm looking to get my hands on some Tallarn my self.

Well thanks for the replies people, my current painting program is 1) Infinity Haqqislam (50% done), 2) 5 ork stormboyz (uuuuurgh) and then back to these guys. I'll post pics next time I finish some!

Magnificent paint job. tip my hat to ya

Wonderful paintjob. You most certainly give these great models the love they deserve.

Beautiful painting just one word of advice Dettol clener the disinfectant stuff is a far safer paint stripper than brake fluid.