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I have always been a massive fan of Advanced Space Crusade and have decided to make a three dimensional board with updated models.
To make it a little different I'm building the marines in the game as Actual Scale Scythes of the Emperor and at the same time building an army for 40k.

To begin with I'm aiming for four tactical squads and a bucket load of converted old school tyranid warriors, genestealers and termagaunts. I'll also be sculpting Zoats and Grabber-Slashers to bolster the nids forces trying to stop the Imperials.
The Scythes will be receiving assistance from the Ordo Xenos in the form of storm troopers and a death watch kill team.

The Board Sections

ASC plays a lot like an advanced version of space hulk so the board sections are marked out with squares for movement and shooting purposes. I'm making these sections from four inch thick foam board tiles of which there will be six in total. I'm building all the interior and exterior walls before sculpting over them with milliput and then adding the fine detail with GS.
This is the WIP experimental board section on which I'm trying out various techniques shown below. The reasoning for the four inch thick base is so that I can add depth to the scenario in the form of chasms and digestion pools.



The Scythes of the Emperor

I had a choice of about five chapters that I could use for this project and in the end went for the Scythes of the Emperor. Here you can see the first of the sergeant models which is armed with a bolter and grenades in the game. This is something that is fixed and only assault sergeants can have the traditional bolt pistol and chainsword.









To begin with I had to struggle with background material for the Scythes untill someone pointed me in the direction of the Heart of Rage story. I've used some of the material from the original game to create the Kraken Campaign badge on the knee in the form of the black and white stripes and have stuck with a codex colour scheme with the red helmet with white stripe indicating he is a veteran sergeant.
They're not great pictures but the base of the miniatures will be the same as the floor tiles on the board sections.


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Advanced Space Crusade was designed so that you can play the campaign using any of the miniatures from Space Hulk and Space Crusade with chaos marines, orks and gretchin being included as Mind Slaves.

Rather than just have regular Orks I've started to convert some old AoBR Nobs with some GS to create a sort of Halo Flood type look with their bodies all bloated and filled with wriggling parasites.



Although not part of the ASC game I have also begun work on the first 40k model for the army in the form of an old school Mk I scaled up dreadnought.
I'm using the Space Wolves rules for these guys purely because the equipment in the squads in ASC being second edition tends to vary a little from regular codex entries. It also means that I can use this dreadnought as a Bjorn proxy to lead the army, which is rather fitting seeing as there are so few Scythes left.
I'm building an armature from blue foam board over which I will sculpt the model with GS.







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For the Ordo Xenos Storm Troopers I'm using converted second edition plastic storm troopers that I have updated with bits from the current range of guard miniatures.




To tie them to the scythes visually I've gone similar black and yellow scheme.

Sweet work so far!

Thanks mate.

Got a bit more done on the dred armature.





Just got the arm to build now then I can begin sculpting once a few other bits are out of the way. The lascannon arm will be based on the original design as close as I can get it but with two barrels on the end to make it twin linked.
Still looking overly simple at the moment but once the sculpting begins I can start to shape it properly.

These are some fantastic marines! excellent greenstuff work, and I just cant wait to see that dead the first edition ones are far cooler than the new gun toting washing machines...

Whoa! A really old school dread being remade. That's awesome, such a great idea.

If you need some pics of the old school dreads for detailing information or scale, let me know. I have a couple of the old dreads and can provide pictures if you need them.

Love the work, keep it up

Excellent sculpting work so far. The relic dreadnought is especially gratifying

Looking forward to more.

The TS scythe and storm trooper looks sick, and being engaged in a similar project myself, I can definitely appreciate the amount of work you have commited to!

Look forward to seeing more, one of these days I am going to have to give true-scaling a go -

Also looking forward to seeing lots more keep up the good job