Battle Ready!

This is a conversion I've had in mind for a while now - a Friar Tuck-inspired Preacher/Battle Priest for my Imperial Guard. I'm happy with the way he is turning out - I may swap the plasma pistol for something a bit different (a stub pistol perhaps?) but otherwise, most of the parts for the conversion are there...

Imperial Guard - Platoon Command Squad

This is my Platoon Command Squad for my new Imperial Guard force - possibly the most fun I've had putting a squad together in years!

 From left to right: flamer, standard bearer, platoon leader, the man with no name, heavy flamer.

This is the platoon commander - possibly the most basic miniature in the squad actually! I modified the legs to be striding forward purposefully, gave him a modified Cadian torso, changed the pose on the sword arm slightly and he has a great head from the plastic Warhammer flagellant sprues.

He received his pistol from the Void plastic sprues mentioned in my previous post. He'll be getting some equipment packs and grenades around his waist. 

This is my rather basic standard bearer - included in the list because of the sort of union/miner theme and also as an excuse to use this lovely Catachan part! He got some modified legs and an arm from the most recent beastmen plastics - a great source of alternate arms once the hair is trimmed away!

This gentleman is actually my favourite from the squad, but he is supposed to be the most expendable!

In the list he's just an extra member of the squad armed with a laspistol and close-combat weapon, but the conversion took on a bit of a life of it's own after I visited a local museum and had a look at some trench axes...

He's made from an unmodified Catachan torso and legs, a Chaos Marauder arm with Empire/Mordheim axe and hand, Catachan arm and Forgeworld laspistol and various pouches and grenades. There's a certain amount of menace in the posing which I'm really very happy with!

This gentleman is the squad's heavy flamer trooper - I have a strong dislike for the half-arsed attempt at a heavy flamer on the Cadian and Catachan command squad sprues, so decided to make my own. The shine from the polycement in the images make it quite difficult to see, but it's based on a similar conversion I saw over on Warseer.

The heavy flamer is made using an extra flamer to bulk it up underneath, moving the igniter nozzles and adding some cable detailing. I've left the backpack unattached for painting purposes - it's tacked in the photos. 

Last but not least, a standard flamer trooper for the squad - modelled to be fitting a replacement fuel container into his weapon.


As mentioned, this was a very nice squad to model, with some interesting conversions to put together. I sorted through my bits box and now have a big pile of equipment and pouches to add to the miniatures already assembled, to show that they're tooled up for a slightly extended conflict...


Once that's done, plus the minor filling needed here and there, my first 400pts are fully assembled and ready for undercoat! I'm very much looking forward to starting to paint this force!

Imperial Guard - Infantry Squad #2

Finished the basic assembly and basing on the second infantry squad of the platoon for my new Guard force.

As you can see, there is a Sergeant, a flamer trooper, a Heavy Stubber team and a mix of lasguns and autoguns for the remaining six troopers.

In this picture you can see the Sergeant, with a pistol from the plastic Void troopers (I love the long magazine) and a chainsword from a Necromundan Van Saar leader - the rest of the leader can be found mangled on one of the Sentinel bases - waste-not, want-not! There's also a converted flametrooper (I much prefer the Cadian flamer, so this is a conversion that is halfway between the two) and a trooper with an autogun, inspired by a piece of Games Workshop art depicting some Imperial Guard attacking Orks in a jungle setting.

Detail on the chainsword - I thought it fit rather nicely! Note the modified legs. 


Once I finish the platoon command squad, the first 400 points for the force will be complete! I have some filling to do here and there but this squad is almost ready to undercoat!

Commissar

I dug this old Commissar out from the pile o' Guard that are waiting for some tender loving care...

I'd already replaced the gun hand and pinned a chainsword onto the pommel left over from the damaged axe I had removed, but whilst the figure was in the box I'd been transporting a bunch of miniatures from my parent's house to my current apartment he'd been separated from both of them. I decided to give him a different set of hands - I found the nice chunky little Scout chainsword arm and a bolt pistol arm, transplanting the hands and weapons onto the oldschool Commissar...


He'll be a generic Commissar for either my Catachan-based or Cadian-based forces.

Imperial Guard/Post-Apoc Objective Markers - Completed

Here are the first four objective markers for my Imperial Guard (with dual usage for my post-apoc setting) complete.

Stuck to a simple palette with these and I used some sponge to add the various scratches and weathering. They should fit rather nicely into my games!

Imperial Guard Scout Sentinels

I've included a squadron of three Scout Sentinels in the armylist for my fledgling Imperial Guard army that I've been working on over the past month - I've put the three together and overcome a slight obstacle that was in the way...

With the earlier plastic Sentinel kit, there were "caps" on the sides of the legs in certain spots - for some reason, nearly all of the second-hand Sentinels I've bought have been missing these! They're a fiddly part, so I suppose a lot of people forget about them. I turned to one of my recent purchases - InstantMold - to make a couple of push molds of those particular parts, then pushed green stuff into the molds. Perfect! I've kept the molds for the next batch of Sentinels I'll be working on - I have parts for another 7...

This Sentinel is armed with a heavy flamer and will receive a hunter-killer missile. The theme for this particular walker is a homage to another Sentinel that I had in my original Guard army - religious zealot running around burning heretics and xenos. He has a crazy-haired head from the plastic Flagellant kit as well as the icon and book strapped to the front. I'm not entirely happy with the icon/book combo - this may see some changes...

Another shot of the zealot's Sentinel, showing the anti-personnel mine next to the stump that he's managed to avoid, as well as some spent artillery shells (from a .22 rifle I went hunting rabbits with a few weeks back). Note the feet - I gave the whole squadron the same feet from the plastic Ork Killa Kan to show that they're a slightly modified pattern. The "toes" on the feet are hooked to give them better purchase when climbing various terrain.

The second Sentinel of the squadron is armed with an Autocannon and is also awaiting a hunter-killer missile. I've managed to scrounge together 3 of the Marine version, which should look nice and different when compared to the latest Guard version, which will be used on Sentinels in my Cadian-based army. I've added a cut down comms-link on the side for their longer-range vox capabilities (and to hide the part where the ammo/charge packs would normally be, but are left off on an Autocannon-armed Sentinel...).

The driver of this Sentinel is well tooled up with plenty of spare ammo for those longer engagements, a shotgun for close defence in case of a breakdown and various rations. I broke out the bag of "interesting stuff for bases" for the squadron - this one received a dead Van Saar ganger with a gushing chest wound at the front of the base...

...as well as various tank track gubbinz, found towards the back of the base.

The last Sentinel is armed in the same way as the second and is also awaiting a hunter-killer missile. Base-wise I kept it quite plain with a tree stump and plenty of rubble. I need to add something nice and interesting to the equipment shelf on the side.


These still require some work before I can go ahead and paint them, but I'm very happy with how they're coming along. 

Imperial Guard/Post-Apoc Objective Markers

Put these together the other night in a polycement-fuelled haze! They're for a Objective Marker competition over on The Ammobunker - it gave me the excuse I've been needing to put some together for my Guard and the Post-Apoc setting - imagine a scavenger gang finding even one of those, they'd be over the moon! 

I plan on making another two objectives on 40mm bases and a couple on 60mm bases to round the collection off.

Imperial Guard Stormtroopers

Introducing the last five members of my first Stormtrooper squad - these were inspired by a post over on another blog, Kings Minis. The subject of the post was basically about getting those work-in-progress miniatures that have been sitting on your workbench for ages finished, restoring some modelling karma and getting on with some other projects!


These Stormtroopers were first built for a table at Games Day '08, in a warbands-vs-zombies 40k scenario I ran with The Ammobunker forum (where I'm a mod). The paint scheme then was very similar and I was happy with the way the conversions turned out. I've rebuilt the figures, adding more members to the squad and building another ten Stormtroopers to take me up to a total of ten now painted and ten awaiting undercoat.

The Sergeant of the squad, armed with a plasma pistol. He's supposed to be activating the commlink built into his helmet...

My personal favourite from this squad - I kept the pose pretty much exactly the same from the miniature used at Games Day but gave him a new head and backpack. Just looks so calm and professional, like a real special operator. That's what I get from it anyway! I love that Catachan head - it's from the older Catachan Sentinel sprue.

Flamer trooper - fairly basic, but had to replace the fuel hose in order for it to fit with those particular legs.

Grenade Launcher trooper - another basic one, I like the posing on this guy, like he's popping a couple of grenades over a wall pre-assault perhaps?

Last member of the squad - basic trooper.

For these there were a few elements I wanted to stick to - Scout legs, Cadian torsos and arms, heads from a number of sources but mainly the tank commander helmets, be they from the standard sprue or from the Baneblade kit. The pistol holsters that are part of the Scout legs are supposed to be empty, as Scouts are generally armed with their pistol - I wanted these guys to be packing back-up weapons so added gun butts to each and every holster with wire and green stuff. They also got extra pouches and backpacks from Maxmini. 

Oh, and I removed all of the Guard symbols and Imperial Aquilas. I just don't like the idea of them being plastered all over the place. Especially on guys that are attempting to be low-key and stealthy. The no-symbol thing is something that has fed back onto my new Regiment and the Cadian-based regiment I'll be working on too - no chunky symbolic gestures for my gents!

Special Weapons Squad - Sniper Rifles

I got another pack of 20 Pig Iron heads in the post today, which allowed me to finish assembly on the second unit for my new Imperial Guard force - a Special Weapons squad armed with sniper rifles. The squad consists of three Guardsmen armed with sniper rifles, with three Guardsmen as spotters/ammo mules, armed with lasguns.

Colonel Straken stand-in

Here's my version of Colonel Iron Hand Straken from the Imperial Guard Codex - In this case, he's the leader of my regiment using the Straken rules. The body is from an older Catachan Officer I bought in a lot of battered Guard miniatures from eBay, the arms are from the Forgeworld Renegade Militia and the head is from the Forgeworld Elysian Drop Troops. I thought that the arms/weapons fit the equipment of Straken, that they make for a rather nice pose and fit the leader of a bunch of ex-Miner, ex-Gangster Imperial Guardsmen! The shoulderpads are nice and improvised, the maul is rather imposing - perfect! He's just tacked together at the moment, but he's pretty much where I want him to be. 


Comments are most welcome!

New Imperial Guard Force

Been working on a new Imperial Guard force of my own creation - I've yet to work on names and suchlike, but the concepts I'm wanting to combine are the Savlar Chem Dogs and the Armageddon Ork Hunters. In my case the regiment is recruited from a mining world basically run by these big mining guilds (read: unions/big gangs with semi-official backing). The vast majority of miners are kept on-world to do the job they're supposed to be doing, whilst the dregs, the criminals and guys who forget that they're supposed to be miners and become full-time gangsters get rounded up every couple of years, forced to work together and shipped off to fight the enemies of the Imperium of mankind!

My particular force have the added fluff bonus of having been used against a couple of roving greenskin warbands and whittled down into a veteran core. So, these guys will nick anything they need, will always be properly tooled up, sport gasmasks from their mining days. There'll be a bunch of tattoos as well, want to make these look quite interesting!

Another reason I went for this theme is that I had a bunch of Catachans with no real place to use them. Thought I'd write a small list and build to that, getting the Cats sorted before I start with the Cadians, which the main part of my Imperial Guard will comprise of (although, modified, plenty of added equipment, bit more realistically than standard Cadians anyway!) - I also had a pack of the Pig Iron heads (with another pack of 20 on the way!) and wanted to use them! Phew!

This is my first infantry squad for the platoon - any name ideas for the regiment would be most appreciated. I'm thinking grey fatigues on these guys, but that's open to opinion too. This squad is: Sarge w/ laspistol/chainsword, Heavy Bolter (Stubber modelwise) and Grenade Launcher.

They're mostly Catachan torso and legs with mostly Catachan arms, but with other arms from the fantasy Chaos Marauders and Beastmen, pouches and sheathed blades from all over the place. I wanted a good mix of lasrifles, so there's Cadian, Catachan and Elysian in the force, as well as Maxmini AK47s as autoguns. 

As mentioned, I have more of the Pig Iron gasmask heads on their way in the post - I may end up replacing some of the bare heads with them to stick closer to the theme.

The squad's "Heavy Bolter" used an Imperial Guard accessory sprue Heavy Stubber, bipod from the Space Marine Scout plastics, and a handle on the top of the gun from the accessory sprue searchlight. 

The rear of the Sarge showing his great Necromundan chainsword, equipment belt and bionic leg (borrowed from a plastic Necron).


Here's the current forcelist:


Imperial Guard - Armageddon Ork Hunters/Savlar Chem Dogs-esque regiment.


Troops


Infantry Platoon
Platoon Command Squad (5 men) @30pts
Platoon Commander - Power Sword @10pts
Platoon Standard @15pts
Heavy Flamer @20pts
Flamer @5pts
Squad Total - 80pts


Infantry Squad (10 men) @50pts
Heavy Bolter @10pts
Grenade Launcher @5pts
Squad Total - 65pts


Infantry Squad (10 men) @50pts
Heavy Bolter @10pts
Flamer @5pts
Power Sword @10pts
Squad Total - 75pts


Special Weapon Squad (6 men) @35pts
3 Sniper Rifles @15pts
Squad Total - 50pts


Fast Attack


Scout Sentinel Squadron (3 Sentinels) @105pts
Autocannon, Hunter Killer Missile @15pts
Autocannon, Hunter Killer Missile @15pts
Heavy Flamer @5pts
Squad Total - 140pts


Force Total - 410pts


This is my current list for them - for a mini-campaign against a mates Ork force. I'm planning on assembling everything for this force before undercoating - I have around about 12 models left to assemble, with approximately another 20 to expand the force with, with a current mock-up of my army's version of Colonel Iron Hand Straken. I'm very happy with that particular model and will be showing it shortly!

Moving Tuesday

At least, Tuesday is the plan! The let is agreed (I "squeeee-d" with delight when I went on the webpage of the apartment I'm about to move into and I saw the little green "Let Agreed" icon on every photo...amazing!) and it's just a matter of all the paperwork going through as soon as possible - hopefully today (Monday). I'm just on packing up a few more bits and pieces, sorting out what games stuff I'm going to take to begin with.


Visual proof of progress...

DVDs are gone, more books are gone, the wardrobe has been emptied and painted white, the vast majority of my clothes are bagged in the green super-strength garden waste bags.


At the moment I'm planning on taking:

• Space Hulk - I have 5 Termies, 10 'stealers and the playing pieces painted - lots more left to do here.
• The pile of basecoated miniatures - lots of AE Bounty stuff, some post-apoc, some Dark Eldar Wyches. These were all on my desk whilst packing up.
• A big box of Imperial Guard - all in bits, but I recently had a tidy out and stock take. Basically went through all of my horded Guard/generic human bits and sorted them into various bits trays (well, the kind of plastic freezer boxes you get takeaway in) and I now have it all sorted into torsos, legs, left arm, right arm, weapons, heads, extras. That took a while. I love the Guard and have been hording stuff for this project since the year before the new IG codex was released. There is well over a hundred infantry, 3 Russ and 10 Sentinels. Lots of work.
• The latest stuff I bought - the zombapoc stuff and a bag of Quar!

Plus the obvious assorted tools and paints.

Plenty to start with I think! The Space Hulk and zombapoc stuff is likely to be used first, so they'll be the priority, with the AE Bounty stuff next up.

I've also just ordered another 2 Kaiser Rushforth figure cases, taking me upto 3 KR and 1 GW. Should be enough (to keep me going anyway) so I can transport most of my collection over!

Bed time I think!

2011's first painted miniatures

These miniatures were originally tacked on to the end of my previous blogpost - I decided that they required their own instead! Presenting (again) the first miniatures of 2011! 

Commissar Ghar, currently assigned to the 42nd/155th (amalg.) Attican "Jesters" Regiment of the Imperial Guard 

First of several Commissars for my Guard army. I love the latest Commissar miniatures and also have the "summary execution" bolt pistol-wielding one too.

The plasma pistol's coils are purple - not quite as dark in real life as in the picture. I do wish they'd given him a decently scaled pistol though! I've recently been buying up the Forgeworld Imperial Guard plasma pistols I can find on various bit sites.

Lunk - Ogryn Hired Gun/Bodyguard - wielding a Karthax N82 Riot Gun 

Lunk is ready to protect whoever has the cred to hire him. A member of the Imperial Guard until his company was demobbed, this abhuman ventured to the Underhive in order to slake his thirst for the local grog and ripperjack stew. 

Lunk was one of my first conversions when I returned to the hobby. He previously had the daft metal head with the horns, which I swapped for a plastic one from the Fantasy Ogre Bulls. I really like the current ones, with their ogryn-sized body armour (and I do intend to buy the one holding the ripper gun two handed to sub for Nork Deddog) - they do seem a bit more standard-army than these older ones. Which makes the older ones suitable for Necromunda...

Current Works In Progress

Just a quickie on what I'm currently painting...

 - Space Hulk Terminators - freshly undercoated.

- Starport Lifter/Loader droid - this pic makes him look a lot cleaner than he is in real life...

- Barrels - for scatter terrain around the Starport - still painting in process, will get various transfers and some other bits and pieces. I want a lot of scatter terrain of crates and shipping containers and barrels around the Starport.

- Imperial Guard Stormtroopers and Commissar - I've recently finished reading the Sabbat Worlds Anthology, which was of the highest quality. It's had the effect of making me want to work on my Imperial Guard once again, and these are the most Work-In-Progress I have paint-wise at the moment. These are the rest of the squad shown a few months ago, plus one of the relatively recent Commissar miniatures. Rather dynamic miniature, and I've had him for ages, it's about time he got some paint-lovin'.

- Bounty Hunter Sniper - last of my Bloodhound Bounty Hunters (for now), he's looked like this for a couple of weeks now...

Half-Track and "Sly Marbo"

Once again I've had a couple of slow weeks on the painting front:

The Half-Track conversion shown earlier in the blog - this will act as a Chimera in some smaller games of 40k with my friends. Very happy with the way this (second-hand, impulse) buy turned out and was a decent test piece for my future Guard vehicles (I have 3 Russ, 10 Sentinels and 2 Basilisks waiting for some TLC).

This is my version of Sly Marbo, the choice from the Imperial Guard codex. "Sly Marbo" represents the Rambo-esque one-man-army type of character - in my case, he's a hoary old veteran who trains the recce/scout portions of my regiment. My force is a combined regiment made up of two decimated regiments that had been through the meatgrinder, supplied with some well-trained but green reinforcements. Guys like this had to whip them into shape before they were sent to a chain of worlds to combat the greenskin menace...

e's a kitbash of plastic SM Scout, Necromunda stub pistol, Kroot rifle barrel as a suppressor, sword from some fancy SM one carved into something that looks a bit more combat-knife-sword-y, torso from the Catachan sprues, demo charge on his waist from a meltabomb and a set of vials of some kind, head from the lovely Chaos Marauder Horsemen sprues.

I accidently bought a bunch of alien-types for AE Bounty recently, so expect more of those in the future...

Half-Track

I've recently been working at a local market, selling various different items. A few different stalls sell second hand toys and other collectibles and a few stalls are dedicated to railways and scale models. This German WWII SdKfz251 half-track was mostly built and part painted. Almost all of the parts were left in the kit and it cost me £3. I thought it had some potential either as a Chimera stand-in or as a vehicle in my post-apocalyptic wasteland - in the end it's become the transport of recon elements of my Imperial Guard force - it will be used in some upcoming Kill Team games...

The kit is 1:35 scale and fits nicely with Imperial Guard figures.

I added quite a bit of extra stowage from other kits, converted the kannon into an autocannon and added a heavy stubber (one of the lovely ones from the Stormlord kit) from the driver's hatch.

In play the Chimera will most likely be transporting a small squad of Stormtroopers, providing support and the ability to take down infantry and light armour in games of Kill Team.

I've always been more interested in the infantry for wargames but I've enjoyed modelling this - I have another few vehicles from the same place to put together and Imperialise... I also have plans for some Savlar Chem Dogs soon, who have always been one of my favourite Imperial Guard regiments. I have a set of the Chaos Renegade Militia arms coming from Forgeworld and some of the Kolony Rebel gasmask heads coming from Pig Iron Productions. I'm aiming for a platoon and some Sentinels, in support of my "straight" Imperial Guard (who will be slightly more utilitarian Cadians (less of the Imperial Guard symbols everywhere for example).