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After a local Orc Warg had ben crushed by an imperial crusade, only one last Ork stronghold on the coast of the northern continent of Gallicum Secundus remained. Yet due to the stubborness of these last defenders of orkish souvereignity and supported by a misterious potion granting them strange powers, the Imperium was so far unsuccesful in removing them and therefore founded a series of Imperial Guard garisons on the neighboring worlds and moons to try and contain the problem, until an eventual solution presents itself. One of these is Kleinbonum, manned by brave Settlers from Gallicums moon who originate from a Regiment originally hailing in the Realm of Ultramar who were granted settlement rights. They use large felinids as steeds and wear platearmor of bright, shining metal. Due to the constant and fruitless fighting against the unconquerable orks, regiments are rotated regularly to preserve morale. One of their regiments even found it's way into the Segmentum Pacificus but was worn down to the point of one last squad of Equites Leonine, who - like others - were integrated into the Askari Rough Riders as reunification with their home regiment was deemed unpractical.




Some 3D printed rough rider models from Thingiverse:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2825509
They are a bit small compared to my other rough riders, so should be printed at maybe 130% or something. I used Greenstuff Worlds Chrome paint again and this time it worked out a bit better. Still not perfect, but better. Their story is a nod towards the Asterix comics. Kleinbonum was the name of one of the roman forts in the german translation.

It took quite some time, as I don't get to paint as much as I used to formerly, but I finished my set of Gaunt's Ghosts:








And as I think a great addition: the bagpiper from Victoria Miniatures as Brin Milo:




All of them were really nice to build and paint. The parts are well thought through, in the sense that I build several subassamblies that could easily be painted everywhere and then put together. I took more time than usual with the cloaks and the result... is better than usual for me, although not quite where I want to be with blending. But I believe in what they say: practice makes perfect. For the skin I used Bugmans Glow, Cadian Flesh and Kislev flesh as well as 50:50 mixes in between. The result was a lot brigther and with more intense contrast between the layers than looked right to me. So I experimented and applied a thin layer of Darkoath flesh contrast paint on top of it, that smoothened it out nicely. Maybe they look a bit more tanned than you would expect from Taniths, but its the best I can do at the moment.
Somewhere along the way I lost Larkins left arm, so he has a replacement from my bitsbox, but luckily it doesn't look out of place

I had a small motivation downer when seeing some other work here that was just miles better than everythin I ever did and still seen by the artist as "botched" because they can do even better. No hard feelings for that, I totally understand, it was just that right then, it hit something in me. But I could remind me, that I paint for myself and the enjoyment along the way and it doesn't matter at all if others do it better.
Just wanted to share, maybe some of you felt the same sometimes.


Now, if only I could get my hands on a cool Medic Dorden, Tona Creed, Shoggy and the others... Maybe a project for later. Or if anyone knows of good proxy minis for them, hit me up!


Lorewise I think the Taniths and Askaris stumbled about each other somewhere in the Sabat Worlds. I'm not sure if the Askaris where in the Sabat Crusade, but I think both regiments would have hit it off quite well. Especially since the Askaris are light infantry and scouts too, even though not so hyper elite as the Tanith.

Looking good Pyro. the leaf litter in the bases looks pretty good, nice work on some classic characters!

After the common wealth fleet came to the rescue of the Thoth system during the night of a thousand rebellions, both forces engaged in various exchanges not only of goods, provisions, ammunition and equipment, but also troops. While the Askaris could provide huge numbers of light skirmishers and scout troops, they severely lack in professionalism and modern infantry tactics as the vast majority of them are recruited from tribal societies. Therefore several hundred soldiers - one might call them mercenaries - were hired from the Commonwealth forces and distributed between the regiments as advisors. Being battlehardened veterans they do their best to tackle the immense task of training their charges and grooming promising squads for command tasks, teaching them their much more refined trade.
One of the formations sending squads are the Klomn thorny dragons that hail from a dry rain forest as do some of Thoths tribes.



The Models are Van Diemens World Devils from Victoria Miniatures. The Bases were made with a Mandala rolling pin from greenstuff world. Guess they are in some temple ruins currently.
Some really cute details in there. One of the plasma gunners has a little Koala plush toy on her backpack. They will be a squad of veterans, as they just look a lot more professional than the rest of my dudes. Also thanks to oldmate for letting me borrow some of his lore for these.

Always great to see something new with the 2nd Thoth Askaris, still coming up with the freshest ideas in the imperium of mankind.

Keep up the great work.

They turned out really well! I do like those las carbines and Victoria's plasma guns rock!

Thanks mates, always very motivating to hear from you. Currently I have a number of vehicles on my desk and will start with some of Victorias Ogryns soon.

I also still have a Taurus APC from puppetswar lying around that my son lost interest in and am still puzzled what to do with it. I think it will be a transport for one of my Inquisitors or maybe my scions. Regardless of what is covered by the rules I'm currently considering two puppetswar Missile launchers I have lying around + a heavy twin lascannon turret from Mortian OR 4x missile launcher or 4-6 Plasma guns from Puppetswar (two of those in a turret).

I think the tendency goes to the last option, would be something really exotic in my army and fit an excentric Inquisitors well. What so you think? The base vehicle is a transport with one turret slot and up to 4 additions weapon points at the sides

https://puppetswar.eu/taurus-apc-a-k-a-brick.html

 OldMate wrote:
They turned out really well! I do like those las carbines and Victoria's plasma guns rock!

Agreed! That little plasma pistol is about the coolest pistol I’ve ever seen. I’d want some for necromunda conversions to replace those late 90’s plasma bricks.

I agree the taurus would make a good inquisitorial transport. And to my mind it'd make sense if said inquisitor wanted to upgun it with a heap of plasma guns. I mean they are pretty effective!

As they are of immense value for the training of the regimento, the Commonwealth Mercenaries are well taken care of and protected, amongst other measures by the provision of Abhuman "muscle" and bodyguards to keep them out of the line of fire. As mentioned before, the Askaris get along relatively well with Ogryns, Ratlings and other abhumans, regularly recruting them on Aoratea as well as absorbing left over Soldiers from destroyed regiments. Loyal and enthusiastic as they tend to be, some have even adopted the clothing style of their charges from the commonwealth, thus looking much in line with them. The reason being that for the simple mind of the Ogryn "Iff wez wear da same stuff as da little ladies, dem snipers cannot decide whom da shoot!". A plan that might have some flaws in it, but Grork, the old, grizzly Ogryn veteran leading the troop got a medal like sticker with E for effort from commissar Butch Baker for really putting his mind into how to protect his charges best.



The minis are the Ogre Mud Crunchers from Victoria Miniatures. I used a lot of Contrast and Washes this time, which made them quite easy to paint. Really satisfied with how the heads turned out. For the beard shadow I just added some layers of nuln oil, for the nose and Lips some Reikland Flesh shade and Carrabough Crimson. Looks much better than my other Faces so far.
I'm still considering addin a "mum" tatoo with a heart to the leader, but I forgot to do it before this photo.

Great work, I do like the oldschool 'actual space ogre/troll' look victoria's ogryns have. great painting and I do like the lore behind this addition, its really cool.

Thanks Oldmate! One thing to note though: the armpair where both hands are one the gun only really fit to one of the three bodies. So definitly dryfit them BEFORE you glue your first set of arms to the body.
I too love this oldschool style. And Victorias Lambs work in general. Funny anecdote: I recently visited my local GW store to buy some paints and was chatting again with my usual "shop guy". He asked what I had been doing recently and I showed him the ogres, a bit unsure how he would take to 3rd party minis, so I felt obliged to add "yeah, I know, they are not GW. I just wanted to show you what I have been up to with the contrast paints." Turns out he met Victoria years ago on some convention and really appreciates her work.

Good to hear it, there is a lot of character in Victoria's sculpts amd i think that goes extremely well with guardsmen.

I managed to finish a bunch of stuff recently. This time lots of vehicles for my Talarn half of the army.
First, thanks to the wonders of 3D printing a Twin Lascannon to turn my Forgeworld Malcador MBT into a Malcador Annihilator if I want to.


Then another happy little Cyclops from Models and Minis. It's almost the same size as the two I got from Blightwheel, but the little vision system on top looks really cute I think.


Next off a Scylla tankette. I saw this kitbash a while ago searching for interesting Guard vehicles and wanted to try it myself. Pretty easy stuff, as one only has to cut down a Chimera hull and tracks a bit and round it up with some parts from the bitsbox. If you try it yourself have an eye out for the tracks, as they don't fit that perfect anymore after shortening the hull. The arabic name on the side means "Amira" which should mean something like "little princess" as far as I found it.


Then we have a Manticore Proxy from Models and Minis. They also sell a variant with 4 missiles but I found the one with 7 looks cooler. The name is the arabic writing for hornet (I don't know how it is pronounced). I found it fitting relating to the sound of the starting missiles.



Last but not least: the Lamassu Minethrower. I found the real world Skorpion minethrower of the Bundeswehr pretty cool (to my knowledge the polish have the Kroton and the british Shielder are pretty similar vehicles). So I remixed and designed something similar on thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4973120
Lamassu is a babylonian/assyrian mythological beast, a bull with the head of a man, 5 legs and often a pair of wings that is a guardian of doors and palaces. Sounded fitting for a minelayer and keeps with the tradition of naming guard vehicles based on the Chimera after mythological beasts.
The name of this specific one is Skorpion. Not only because of the real world vehicle it is based on because it also fits that you "have to thread carefully" where mines are involved. If you want to print it maybe wait a week or two. During my try I identified some things that did not work out the way I intended, so I will update the files in the near future to improve it.

Edit: in the lower right are the mine tokens it is intended to place on the battlefield...

Aaaaand another one. Again a conversion set from models and minis, this time for a recovery vehicle.
I used some 1/35 tiger 1 rubber tracks from AFV club for it, an idea I got from a Leman Russ tank of the user danesk. I think it looks pretty badass with those wide tracks and it fits perfect for a recovery vehicle needing lots of traction.
Funny little accident: I unknowingly ordered two right Chimera tracks and only realized while priming, even though I had looked at it and dryfitted it like... a bazillion times. But I just did not see that one side was upside down before the paint was on. When I told my wife, she basically said "wait, just leave it that way. Maybe your guys had a tank that lost one side and the only parts for repair were from a tank with the same side blown off. So they had to improvise. Just make sure to slap two different paint schemes on them."
Who am I to recejt such an idea. So I tried one side and the hull in a free "spray paint" stripe scheme and the other in a more "blotchy scheme" with clear borders in the same colors. It's... something. But maybe it would look even cooler if I had done the second side in the green color scheme of my N'Go vehicles. I will let it sit in my collection for a while and then decide if I will do that side again.

Edit: the mine plow is also from Models and Minis



The writing on the front and sides means "Aardvark" in arabic. I mean this animal:

They are pretty interesting nocturnal borrowing animals which kind of fitted. I personally like them a lot since the Berlin Zoo had two of those in their night animal house when I was a kid and I always found them pretty cool to look at.

I love the idea of a techpriest having a hot-take when it realised it had 2 right track units for the single vehicle that was sitting half assembled in front of it in the workshop, then an Askari mechanic slaps the priest on the back and says "its perfectly alright, it just needs...a little adjustment."

You’ve put together a really interesting assortment of armour there. What a fantastic collection and some very spiffy paint jobs too.

Thanks Crowe, I appreciate it. I still have a bunch of IG stuff on my desk but as things go I recently got a nice AdMech lot from a guy who sold his pile of shame to concentrate on his main armies. Kind of hyped if the paint scheme I thought up for them will look good

Looking forwards to seeing the ad mech stuff, do you have an idea for a colour scheme yet?

What I want to try is:

Skitarii robes: black-dark purple with purple highlights
The white glyphs painted with GSW fluo paint pink
Lenses/powerweapons: glowing orange
Metal parts: a grubby Iron tone combined with bronze

Vehicles: one of GSWs color shift paints, likely Darth Blue like my beetle. Also with glowing orange lenses.

Sounds really cool, an interesting and unconventiobal choice of colours all round. i recently used GSW's flou orange on my praetorian's plasma gun and my carnodon's volkite weapons the glowing effect was pretty good. I think a darth blue dune crawler would look excellent, like a mechanical beetle!

New reinforcements!

First of, another Rough Rider (because I obviously don't have enough already *cough*). This time from Reaper Miniatures, with a rider cobbled together from various sources. I tried to paint him like a secretary bird, as I find those pretty cool. Really nice model, easy to handle and good detail for its price.


Next of: the N'Go approach to a Hades Breaching drill

I grabbed the mini for a hand full of Euros in my local games store and had it sitting on my shelf for quite a while. Then I saw a youtube tutorial on painting a Seraphon Carnosaur that looked stunning and decided to try and do that myself. Turned out pretty cool I think. I would intend it as a Hades Breaching drill. It might not really look like something digging through the earth, but the drills CC-profile definitly fits well. And as you can see the size does too:





EDIT: Oh, and with that I should now be almost at 7000 points... With like... 800 something still in my pile of shame... still going strong

Some really cool new additions. I imagine the terror bird would make quite a good cavalry mount, with good avian endurance and heat tolerance (and decent insulation)and would certainly be able to do a lot of damge with powerful kicks and blows with that beak.
The ankylosaur certainly looks hazardous, the tail that topples war machines and shatters the limbs of other monsterous beasts. The Askaris could tip its club spikes with metal to aid in performance against armour...

And again something that took me way to long due to vaccations and lots of real world stuff going on. Nonetheless I present you the new ride + protection for my Inquisitors



The vehicle is from Puppetswar, as are the Plasmaguns, Heavy Bolters and the turret to fix the 3rd pair of each to the top. The Twin Lascannon turret is from Mortian. Everything is magnetized of course. I don't think there currently is a 6x Plasma vehicle in any codex. The version with the Twin Lascannon or Twin Heavy Bolter without something else might be a Twin Lascannon Razorback though. For myself Lady Natasha Obviously takes the 6x Plasma version...


And the cute little turret bots from Puppetswar. These are meant to be Tarantula Batteries. I fixed another magnet on top because I want to get a Skytalon sometime that drops these into action. Not legal ruleswise, but it should look pretty cool in my vitrine.

Very nice. You got that gloss black look with enough detail to keep it interesting to the eye but not so much as to make it a Christmas tree. (I unfortunately have a black chimera of the Christmas tree variety in my collection)

Great magnetic options with the weapon platforms too. My kids and I would just play with that and to pot with any rules and dice. Pew pew pew! We’d have a great time.

Nice work on the inquisitorial vehicle and turrets. Is the twin las cannon turret from mortian? Fits really nicely. Really nice work as ever Pyro.

Yes the Lascannon turret is from Mortian. Looks pretty badass as it is really big.

Some new projects I finishes recently:

Bridgelayer Mamba

This one is a 3D print of a model based on the user Vontragg on Thingiverse. I just modified the bridge and delivery system to be a bit more massive. You can find the file here:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5538270
as well as the version from Vontragg here:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3697605
I botched the alignment of the "support beds" in the rear, but well... it still looks OK. The writing on the front is again Mandombe skript and reads "Mamba" which is the Swaheli word for crocodile. The symbol on the sides is "14" in the same writing system as I wanted to imply the Askaris having quite a few of these vehicles.
Here are some pictures of its function. The bridge is stable enough to support the rather heavy printed chimera and should be able to hold any GW plastic tank as well as an FW Carnodon. I havent tried my Malcador yet.



Salamander Command Abshir
This is a conversion set from Models and Minis. I added some instruments and communication equipment as well as two backup guns and amplivisors in the front compartment to make it look more "command like". It is intended as ride for my Commissar Butch Baker and his aide (which are totally not Ciaphas Cain and Jurgen *cough*)
The name on the side is another interesting writing system named Kaddare Skript. It should read "Abshir" which is a somali name meaning something like "bringer of good news".




Sentinel Bizumesh

This one is based on an idea I got from the user Ezki here on Dakkadakka. Even though my conversion is much less refined than his. Still pretty fun conversion. The flamer arm is 3D printed, as I could not get my hands on the original part for a reasonable price. The flame is from Anvil Industry. I tried to do a variation of the paint scheme of my Ankylosaurus on the nid on the ground. It also got some bullet holes in his back before I decided to arm the sentinel with a flamer. So I used a match to literally melt its face and applied some Martian Ironcrust (not sure with the name, the crakle paint version...) and painted the black with grey drybrush afterwards to imply burned earth and Nid.
"Bizumesh" is an ethiopian name meaning something like "he has seen/experienced a lot", which seemed fitting for such an unholy field conversion done by the Askari mechanics.


a close up of the nid:

Great work. Its always inspirational to see your new projects. Bridgelayer is really cool, i might have to check out getting one for my forces!
Always nice to see a salamander.

By the way how many salamanders and salama der proxies do you have by now mate? Its gotta be a few!

The deffdred sentinel pentence engine is a really cool 'field conversion' i like the thought of some Askari arv just chaining up and dragging a heap of mech hulks from the battlefield, then the guys at the workshop being like: 'well if weld this to that and put that arm here...'

Thanks Oldmate. Regarding the Salamanders: this one is the 4th, but one of those also looks pretty badass with a Flame gun as hellhound.

My next projects list contains a variety of Sentinel variants, so this part of my "light vehicle pool" will also be expanded some more.