Dark Heresy - Titus Grendel, ex-Adeptus Arbites Detective

As mentioned in my post from a few days ago, I've started with a Dark Heresy gaming group - I rolled up my first character the other week, an ex-Adeptus Arbites Detective, now Seeker for a mysterious Inquisitor. My character is partnered with a mouthy gunslinger and a quiet Imperial Guard veteran. My character starts out with a shotgun and Arbites chest armour, but I hope to be able to pick up some more tools of the trade...

I started off the conversion by digging through my sci-fi/post-apoc bits and pieces to see what might work as a basis for the figure. I found a scout torso (perfect for the armoured torso) and I was pondering on what legs to use when I found a Warmachine Cygnar character that I'd bought a while back to turn into a post-apoc character. The trenchcoat seemed perfect and I liked the look of the knee-pads, plus he was sporting a bunch of pouches for handcuffs and the like. Brilliant! Out came the jewellers saw and he was chopped in half at the waist. I was careful to retain the belt whilst on with this. I also dug through the "sci-fi heads" bits selection and found the Sternguard head I eventually went for - mainly as it was one of the few heads that wasn't screaming or shouting...

I also found a holstered shotgun from the Space Marine Scout Bikers and a selection of Scion arms - from these I chose a pair that matched the posing well, removing the pistol/chainblade combo from one and replacing it with a Necromundan pistol hand (with stub gun, but looks like it'll work when I get a nice handcannon!) - the other hand held a sort of ceremonial staff of some sort - I removed the head of this and replaced it with one from a MaxMini shock maul (a set of which I'd bought to build some Arbites, alongside the "Space Police" heads - I may just have to build some local Enforcers for the Dark Heresy game too!). I've started sculpting the rest of his jacket to match the torso to the legs, but it's going to take another session or two to get it just right...

Any thoughts on colour scheme? I'm very happy with the look and pose of the model - it fits the idea I had in my head very well - I'm very happy with the look of a seasoned former Arbites officer...

The good ship Serenity

This had been in my box of miscellaneous miniatures-to-paint for a good while - it came from Ground Zero Games and I had planned on using it in Battlefleet Gothic, or a similar system, to tie in with some Inquisitor games. It'd be a small inter-system ship for ferrying an Inquisitor and his retinue between planets, or a ship to be escorted out of harms reach. Quite a nice figure - I realise that it'd be hideously out of scale compared to the ships in BFG, which is why I had other ideas for it too. I picked up some of the em4 Miniatures plastic spacecraft a couple of years back, with plans to use them in a sort of chase scenes for the various games I want to play - this would have featured!

Halt, Inquisition!

Did some more work on the Inquisitor recently - I decided to remove some of the disco collar he was sporting, as well as giving him a powerpack/backpack for the carapace armour and a sheathed sword. He's certainly getting closer to my intended target! He needs a rosette of office and possibly a brass =][= icon from Forgeworld...

Inquisitor Project

I've always been a massive fan of the Inquisition - I love the vast scope of the various beliefs and sects within the overall organisation, the eclectic-look of the Inquisitor's themselves as well as their many varied followers and hired mercenaries. I love the idea that this one individual has such power and scope - the weaponry they wield, the troops they employ, the political clout they hold. I love the idea of narrative gaming - in fact, I've always preferred skirmish games for exactly that reason. I love seeing my characters develop and take on a life of their own.

When the Inquisitor rulebook first came out I snapped it up straight away. I bought one of the miniatures off a friend - a gunslinger with Inquisitor Eisenhorn's head. That was the end of my 54mm gaming, but not the end of Inquisitor - I've had multiple warbands at 28mm over the years since the release. A lot of those miniatures were sold or stripped and recycled into new warbands or Necromunda gangs and I end up building a new warband every year or so when I re-read the Eisenhorn trilogy! 

That being said, here is the very start of my most recent warband for Inquisitor - again at 28mm, which has many benefits - my current terrain and miniatures collection is 99.5% 28mm, as are the miniature collections of my wargaming friends. I've been inspired by a good few things recently, but the work of Commissar Molotov over at Inq28 is definitely first and foremost. The quality of the characters and conversions are superb! As they say, imitation is the best form of flattery, and with that in mind I've started towards a new Inquisitor campaign with some friends!

I picked up this miniature from Black Hat Miniatures' Cobalt-1 range, which had been out of production for a while - I leaped at the chance to get it after seeing a similar conversion over on Tales from the Maelstrom. I remember seeing the Cobalt-1 range advertised in a few wargaming magazines back in the early 2000s - sadly, I was a poor college student then and could not afford any. Not much has changed on the finance front lately, but I still had to pick up a couple of miniatures from the range! This guy is my rough-and-ready Inquisitor. At the moment all I have is the conversion, but I'm thinking Ordo Xenos, slightly radical (will hire xeno warriors if needed). I'm not sure whether to keep the collar or not as of yet...

Another slight conversion of a Cobalt-1 miniature - this is a tribal swordsman character, taking inspiration from Arianhrod Esw Sweydyr, the Carthean swordswoman from the Eisenhorn trilogy. I liked the feel of the miniature - makes me think of John Carter of Mars. The original head on the figure had a high forehead, likely some kind of very-humanoid alien - I wanted a tall human from a sword-wielding culture, so I removed the head with a saw and drilled out a hole for the new head to sit in. I also used my clippers to make the feet a touch more human - they were previously very wide and flat.

As you can see from the above pictures, I'm torn on which head to use - to begin with I was very happy with the Space Wolf Scout head with trimmed mohawk in the first picture, but then discovered the Chaos Marauder horseman helmet in the second picture, which I'm leaning towards after discussing it with Daniel of Feralique. If you have any thoughts on this, or any other suggestions, please let me know in the comments! I've also added the pommel from a plastic Warhammer pistol to the gun hand. If you have any suggestions at all for the two miniatures, please comment!

Fightin' for the Imperial Coin

Small update now, with some fairly dreadful pictures...

Once a mercenary hired by the Inquisitor to provide extra support in a underhive tussle, Karchev ended up joining the Inquisitor and becoming a Throne Agent in his own right. Wielding a dual-minigun that puts down an immense rate of small-caliber fire, the ex-merc has become the backbone of the warband.

As mentioned at the start of the post, the pictures have turned out pretty bad - the shine in parts isn't visible in person, I'd guess it's to do with not giving the Devlan Mud wash a good enough shake. The teal/orange scheme is a slight homage to Boba Fett (it's also a lot more teal in real life...honest!). Just a few members of the team to go now, but I'm really happy with how it's shaping up!

In the Imperial Navy...

Imperial Navy Armsman - this is a character for my Inquisitor 28mm games, one of my Inquisitor's most loyal henchmen, once an Armsman on a Imperial Navy vessel, the veteran warrior carried the unconcious form of the Inquisitor to a saviour pod, saving his life when the ship carrying the Ordo Xenos Inquisitor was ambushed by Ork pirates. The mini is one of the Catachan officers with boltpistol and chainsword replaced with a naval pistol and boarding cutlass. Thought it seemed like the perfect combination and made for a rather characterful miniature!

More Weird War

Got this lady finished tonight...

I had thought I'd finished her paintjob a couple of evenings ago, but when it came to taking pictures tonight I saw a few bits to sort out. I'm still not very happy with the miniature as a whole, but she'll do. She was bought in a couple of pulp job lots on eBay a few months back (with money that I shouldn't have been spending on miniatures...as always!) - I doubt I'd have bought her otherwise. The sculpt is just fairly bad, the head was huge in proportion to the rest of the miniature, one arm is rather longer than the other. I was lucky to have a spare head that worked well enough! Enough complaining... She's obviously for Weird WWII or Pulp games, both genres I love but struggle to find opponents for...

This guy also arrived in the post - Heresy Miniatures new sniper ganger. He's going to be an Inquisitorial agent in 28mm Inquisitor games, possibly a Vindicare if I ever use the Daemonhunters rules in 40k or a ganger in games in my post-apoc wasteland or Necromunda. I spray undercoated him black then gave him a basecoat of Khemri Brown, I'm not sure where to go now...

Comments and criticism are most welcome, I love to hear what people think about my stuff and it's usually a bit of a kick up the backside to make me paint more :)

Mercs and Muties

Got these guys finished tonight...

Good to get something done :) Off for a picnic tomorrow, then hopefully Iron Man 2 on Monday, that should set me up nicely to start working again on Tuesday!

Working on...

After a little bit of a rubbish week I've finally gotten around to starting a spot of painting. I'd planned on painting some more Chaos Hounds next (I've recently finished 6 which I have yet to post up) but decided to do something that felt less like a chore...

"Scourge" from RAFM's USX Modern Day Heroes line (he's basically copied from Army of Two), a repaint of Cobra from Hasslefree (the not-Snake Plissken, who I'd finished last year but sadly took a tumble and was rewarded by chipped paintwork) and the mutant gunslinger for 28mm Inquisitor that I previewed a couple of weeks ago. They're all on their way to getting finished now :) which has cheered me up at least a bit...

Here's to a better week beginning Monday!

That's how ya got a bullet blasted through ya head...

I thought the title was appropriate, given the nature of the miniatures I'm updating with, and the recent goings on in the UK music charts.

A little bit more background to my wargames hobby now; Around about 6 years ago I became very much disenchanted with the wargames hobby. It seems like most people in the hobby go through similar stages, was just a bit fed up with it, decided to spend my money elsewhere. I didn't have much income at the time (not that that has changed...) and had more pressing matters to attend to (trying to afford rent, for example) which led to me leaving the hobby for a while, selling off a bunch of stuff and even binning some stuff (I seem to remember a big box of Necromunda bulkheads and card terrain going in the bin), which really makes me want to weep now.

Ah well. Through all of this, I hung on to various things, either due to them being well hidden during the frantic eBaying and binning sessions, or general nostalgia. When I returned to the hobby (just when I thought I was out...) I happened to still have a bunch of Marines (they'd been languishing in brake fluid for a while, I was stripping them for sale on eBay), various "Specialist Games" stuff (some Necromunda stuff, an Imperial BFG fleet, a kitbashed Blood Bowl team, Mordheim miniatures) and the remains of my primary pre-fall army - the Imperial Guard.

When the plastic Cadians were released I bought lots of them. I had a decent sized army, somewhere between 2000 and 3000 points depending on Inquisition allies. When I "left" the hobby, I sold off a bunch of the heavy weapons teams, several very nice (in my opinion) and heavily converted veteran squads, a full Ratling sniper squad, various tanks and a squadron of Sentinels, not to mention most of the support from the Inquisition. What I had remaining was a chunk of basic infantry, one poorly converted Leman Russ tank and 6 mortar teams.

In the past few years that I've been back in the hobby I have amassed a rather large collection of Imperial Guard, and I have been holding off from restarting them due to lack of funds and (back at the start of the year) the looming new Codex. Now that the Codex is released, I have a number of plans for my Imperial Guard, that currently await me getting some more disposable income! So, for the time being at least, I'm going to concentrate on "special" units, ones outside of the normal infantry. In a future post I'll do a sort of "stock check", listing my current Imperial Guard miniatures and organising them into some kind of workable list. For now, here are my latest squad, or half of them at least:

These are half of my Commissar Cadet squad. They'll play using the Penal Legion squad rules, in a "Counts As" fashion. Commissar Cadet squads are something I first read about in the Citadel Journal, many moons ago. Basically a squad of wannabe Commissars from the Schola Progenium, sent to get some taste of battle under an instructor, who in my squad will be represented by the brilliant Mordian Lt. figure:


Who had a weapon-swap to fit with the rules - a Bolt Pistol changed for a nice Laspistol from the old Necromunda weapon sprues. It's a shame I totally missed the fact he has a great big set of bandoleers around his blasted waist! Nevermind!


I haven't gotten much painting done today though - most of my time was spent painting this chest for my bedroom in the "shabby chic" style:


Almost finished, just needs a sanding and a coat of varnish! The instructor and the rest of the Cadet squad are almost finished, just a few bits to do on them now. I also have a bunch of Terminators (15 altogether...) I'd like to get finished in the next few days, as I have Space Hulk arriving on Christmas day - it would have been nice to have gotten them done, looks unlikely now though!


Chris