An army.....never done this before.

I'm nearing the end of my quest to have all the minis required to run The Wolf Time campaign. I could have taken the easy way out and just used proxies, but it wouldn't be the same now would it :)

If you have a look back at when I started this madness you can see the list of minis that I wanted to have. Well, the Space Wolves component of this project have now been officially completed!


And here they all are, broken down into their respective units. Note: to differentiate the squads from each other I painted a coloured stripe down their helmets, so as to help me identify them on the tabletop a little easier. And as an added bonus (and more importantly)  it makes them look cooler :)


First up are the three Tac squads, yellow stripe;

Second, the two Dev squads, white stripe;

Lastly, the single Assault squad, white stripe with black banding;

Here are the individual squad Sergeants, with their respective squad markings on their legs. Coz it would have looked dumb if I painted the stripe down their faces :P

And here's a shot of the whole gang, chillin;

A close up of one of my favorite Sergeants, because I can :) 

Great for picking his nose it is!

Having a look back at my "to-do list" of the minis that I needed to play this campaign, there's quite a few that I can now scratch off:

15 Howlers aka tactical squad
10 Snarlers aka Devastator squad
5 Tearers aka Assault squad
5 Trackers aka jet cycle squad
6 Wolf Time characters
11 Ork Nobz. I originally thought I could get away with 5 but after I got some clarification on the Oldhammer forum I realised that I'd need more....ll actually, the last being for a character model.
1 Ork Character model Kulo
Couple of terrain pieces
Dungeon floor plans No#1
Dungeon rooms
Judge Dredd Citi-Block floor plans


So far , if I disregard The Wolf Time thing for a moment, painting up an army has been a whole new experience for me. Sure, I've collected enough minis to have an army.......probably a few times over if I'm honest. But I've never actually sat down, planned out a force and painted them to completion before. This project, thus far, has taken me a bloody long time though, almost from the end of March this year! How all the cool kids who bang out armies for modern 40K do it on a regular basis, while still maintaining a modicum of enjoyment in the process, I'll never know?

I'll be taking a little break from The Wolf Time for a short while. I wanna catch up on some of my unfinished projects first, namely my Hovertank & Siege Dreadnought :)


Anyway, thats it from me :)

May you all have a Merry Xmas and eat so much that you become violently unwell :P

The Wolf Time Characters.

Ok, the next batch of Marines is done. Here are "The Wolf Time" Space Marine characters. Shown in some kinda semblance of an order;

"Say cheeeeesssseeee pretend plastic warriors!"

Librarian Edrigar, on a mission to promote reading to the wider universe.

Durlan the Navigator, looking to the stars for directions, coz his lost, again!

The good Captain Inferno, enjoys waving both his weapons in the air...coz it scares the enemy but good!

Captain Greylock, he's good with kids and killing others......all at the same time!

Captain Storm, made sure ALL the tomatoes were well and truly diced!

Commander Enoch, unshaven, moody and loves to punch heads off shoulders.....he's not fussy, any will do.

I'm pretty happy with how they all turned out. They look unique and should be easily identifiable on the tabletop during play. Hopefully they last more than a couple of rounds, but as a general rule, most virgin minis don't last five seconds :)


Next in line for the miniature photo shoot will be the Space Wolf footsloggers.


So bye for now & stay frosty!

Bullock Jet Cycle unit complete.

Hi all,

I finally finished off the required unit of Bullocks for The Wolf Time campaign I'm hoping to run early next year. It's only a few months overdue.....that's normal :P

The sergeant (guy in the middle) was finished around mid September, but I dragged my arse finishing the rest of them off. Well, here they are now! Enjoy;

I mounted them in few different positions & heights (obviously) to hopefully break up the "same same" look of them a bit.

"Clearing the way" to his objective, smoking a cigar......what a cool dude!

I sort of envisioned this guy shooting from high up, raining death down upon his enemies.

This guys pose is a little boring....meh.

Zoom, zooma zoom zooooom!!!!

Looks a little like an advert this photo. Might have to work on my staging I think.

So, that's one squad down, only a whole lot more to go. But don't worry. I'm almost done with the rest of the crew. I've been batch painting, god I hate painting that way, but it seems that that's the only feasible way to paint up an army. Oh well :)


See you in the soup my fellow lead addicts,
Cheers.

Space Wolves WIP

Greetings gentiles,

Just thought I'd show you a couple of pics of my "Space Wolves in the making". It's all part of my "slowly, but surely" plan to finish all the required units I'd need to successfully run "The Wolf Time" scenario from the Book of the Astronomican. Their almost finished actually, base coating & highlights are done, just need to apply a few washes & some detail work and they'll be finished.....oh, and the basing too ;) On second thought, there's still a shit load to go isn't there!? Oh well, onwards & upwards.

Clicky click the pic if you want to see them more closer uppera!

I'm pretty excited to see how these things are gunna turn out too :)

I've mounted the five Bullock Jet Cycles on plastic chopsticks (as you do) while I attack them with my painting "skills". They'll be mounted, in the end, on those flimsy clear placky flying bases that are...well....pretty damn flimsy! 

Cheers :)

Super sizing a boltgun.

As part of my insane quest to build a MK14 Bullock jet cycle from scratch, I needed some RT style bolters to mount on the front. Suitably chunky bolters too, if I wanted to retain that oldschool aesthetic.

Unfortunately for me (and you too), Citadel never produced chunky RT style bolters, like the type found on the original bullock. Sure, they made them, but they were integral to a miniature, being held by the dude.....not the bolter on it's own. Well, I tell a little lie, they did produce a couple of "free standing" bolters, but they were titchy small.

The only other option was to use the RBT01 placky bolters. Their side profile is great, plenty of detail. But front on, their just too narrow compared to the original bullock bolters. So, the solution? I'd need to make my own. No biggy, I just raided my bitsbox for a couple of RBT01 boltgun's & set to work.



Here's how I solved my dilema:

Standard RBT-01 placky bolter.

Grabbed two of them.

Sanded each one on either side, down to the parting line. 

Glued the two halves together.

Re-fIt a new barrel & pistol grip, done.

Old & new side by side.

What do you think?

Some of you may be thinking I'm mad, wasting my time. Could have easily just bought bolters by the dozen off of eBay. But I didn't want just any old type of boltgun though. There's two issues with the post RT bolters; Apart from all those stupid skulls sculpted onto every spare bit of space, the magazine is in the wrong place. Well, it's actually the correct place if you want to look at it from a logical &/or mechanical stand point. But aesthetically it's all wrong....for RT. And it would have shown up like dogs balls if I'd chosen to use them instead of the old style one's.

Anyway, it didn't take me that long to make it. And now I've made a silicone mold of it as well, I can cast them up whenever I feel like it. I'm sure I'll have a need for them in the future sometime.

Cheerio fella's :) 

The Wolf Time character's are done man!

I was able to finish off the Space wolf characters for the Wolf Time campaign a few days ago. I had to wait for a chainsword to arrive from a bits trader before I could complete the last one, the one pictured below......in all his plastic majesty!

Bionic eye made from a cardboard rivet & bent piece of wire, snazzy!

Have chainsword, will carve!

How many plastic surgery cuts can you spot in this pic?

Up on his tippy toes, trying to get off this damn base!!!

I thought I'd do a bit of a tutorial on how I modified this guy, so here goes,

Step 1: Arms.

To get the outstretched arm holding the chainsword I had to select the best candidate to chop up. There's only a couple of options (both L&R) with the RBT01 kit to choose from. But because the detail is quite basic you can use either side for the opposite appendage if you want. In this case I didn't need to, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

Out of the two left arm options I chose the one on the right for this particular chop job.

I then removed the hand at the wrist & arm from the shoulder joint. Drilled up through the guts of
them, test fit a paper clip & bent it to the desired position.

Repeated the process for the chainsword.

Then slammed them all together & glued the bastard!!!!!!!

To add strength & fill in the gaps I'll later use the "filla powda & super glue"
trick....mentioned during my repairing broken slotta tabs tutorial.

Step 2: Legs.

There's two to choose from on the sprue, but they both have similar problems. The first issue, they both have their hips rotated at a downward angle, almost at 45 degrees. Which is "fine" for general poses, but it really does limits your choices. And there's no easy fix for it either! You can't just cut the legs off at the hips and rotate the groin around into a perpendicular position. Not only will his knees be knocking together, but he'll also end up looking like he's sitting on the loo too.....not a great look on the pretend battlefield now is it?

The second problem is that the legs aren't aligned along any axis. What I mean by this statement is that when viewed from the front or side, the thigh & shin are misaligned at the knee. He's basically bow legged. The only exception to this is the right leg of the right set of legs, but he's good in only one axis (viewed from the front), but his foot is angled off....not much of a gain.

What this all boils down to is that you really need to do some major surgery to the hip or knee joints, as well as the groin, if you want to change their pose....into a convincing pose that is! If your aim is to make them look all fucked up & mutated then just do a basic "cut & shut" modification....you'll be in heaven!

The two leg options in the RBT01 kit.

Left leg removed & discarded. I shaved a fair amount off the groin at the hip joint too.

Replaced the original left leg with one from the other set of legs (pictured on the right here), shaved the hip joint
 on the leg at an angle & repositioned his toe. Original left leg (on the left) shown for comparison.

Only modification to his right leg was just pointing his toes down. 

Here he is, "pre-armed".

Ok, so he was the last main dude to be finished....or "almost" finished. Gotta add a few little things to them here and there & then they'll all be warm & toasty. I took a group shot of them in their current state, posing in imaginary threatening poses to my camera, enjoy:

L-R: Commander Enoch, Captain Greylock & Storm.

L-R: Captain Inferno, Librarian Edrigar & Navigator Durlan Ocellati.

These guys will get the attention the deserve once all the other members of the contingent are finished off.

Bye for now :)

I like threesomes, doesn't everyone?

Yawn, yet another post........

I've gone and just finished putting my Navigator together. I'm happy with how he's worked out, still gotta add some bling to him here & there, but he's mostly done. Here, take a look for yourself:

"Here, what's that up in that tree over there? The thing with the big fang's that's glaring back at me?"

"Had to step over a little chasm on this black disc didn't I!".

Why did I choose a bug eyed head for him? Well, after reading through the description for Navigators in RT I decided that I needed some sort of mutation.....it helped that it was also the easiest conversion to do too :p

Here's the description lifted from Rogue Trader:

 

I get the feeling that they were trying to insinuate that Navigators were descended from the ancient Slann & that their supposed to look a bit freaky to us humans too. Here, have a look at this ugly fucker from The Book of the Astronomican and you'll see what I mean:

"Put ya helmet & gloves back on for Christ sake!!!"

Ok, now the title of this post must really be eating you up by now.....yeah?.....probably not :( But why the sexual innuendo? (apart from the comedic angle) Well, have a look at his head. Can you guess where it's from?.......no?....yes?....if you need more clues have a look at the next picture:

What have these three minis got in common? Apart from them being in unfinished states :(

Answer: Their conversions have all been made possible from just one donor mini! Here he is, pre- butchery:

Image care of Stuff of Legends. Damn that's a bloody useful site isn't it!

And "post" butchery:

Even after all that I've done to him, he's still sporting a smile. Well, he's a Slanneshii worshipper after all! He most likely enjoyed it!

I'm all out of mental juice for now. Hope you got some perverted enjoyment out of this post....I know I did :)

See you in the soup.