Space Marine Vindicator Conversion

 It's a little tank with a great big gun!

Inspired by last week's comments, I decided to have another go at a conversion I did many years ago. It was gathering dust and slowly falling apart at the back of a cupboard, and I fished it out to see what I could do.

Before all that Primaris nonsense, space marine tanks were largely based on the Rhino APC chassis. The two main variants, the Vindicator and the Whirlwind, had a big cannon and a missile launcher, respectively. I must have realised that, if you could make the bits interchangeable, you could, er, interchange them.

So, I had bought a Rhino and got to work building a massive cannon to go on the roof. The "real" Vindicator has its cannon at the front, but this would be easier to swap out and would look more cool/ridiculous. I built the cannon out of a pipe from an old scenery kit, along with parts from various Empire buildings. When I fished it out last week, the tank looked like this:

Very dusty. I didn't really like the ram on the front, so I removed it. I also felt that the cannon looked a bit basic and front-heavy, so I made some hydraulics out of bits left over from a knight titan. Plasticard was used to attach them and space things out.

A bit better. Once painted it looked like this. I used a basic grey shaded up slightly and washed with thinned-down brown to represent dirt. It's nothing very fancy but it helps to bring out the details.

I also added some details from Empire kits and the spare parts from the original Rhino. Then it was time for paint!

Considering how a lot of my marines look, this is pretty low-key. Of course, it's very silly and I don't know how you'd load the gun, but it is sort-of-modular (ie the top falls off) and it fits the look I was going for (a bit like a castle). 

Incidentally, I discovered today that an official chapter called the Brazen Claws uses the same red-and-blue quartered design as my chaps, except all over their body armour. However, they don't sound as fun as my chapter. So there. And on the subject of fun, I think I'll repair the rocket launcher part of this tank, so it can also be a whirlwind - and that looks really silly...

More Medieval Marines

 Here are some marines. I had so much trouble getting a half-decent photograph of any of these.

This is a "masters of the chapter" model which was missing a head and an arm.

This guy is an unconverted veteran marine.

The two below are lower-ranking marines with basic bolters, based on some pretty battered plastic marines that I got from ebay. This bloke has a Bretonnian man-at-arms head and helmet. 

And the final marine has an Empire shield on his left pauldron. I used chequered patterns for variety and to suggest additional heraldry.

They'll be joining the rest of my knightly marines (named the Shining Knights until I think of something better). I don't know why, but the pictures look as if there's almost no shading on these models. I should get back to painting something more photogenic.

Female Fighters for Mordheim

 I thought it would be nice to include a couple of female adventurers in the Mordheim warband. For one thing, it provides a bit of visual variety and for another you get some more opportunities for modelling random people.

The first one I made used a lower body from a very mangled Eldar warlock that I got a long time ago. The upper body was a Tempestus Scion breastplate, with some old Mordheim mercenary arms, and a head from Stargrave. She looks like a tough customer!

I kept with the usual colour scheme, but tried a more complex pattern on her skirts. This involved a "weaving" pattern, which I copied from a Bretonnian knight. I found this really difficult, and frankly it made my head hurt. It's done now, although I think it could be better. Maybe sometime I'll have another go, but for now I'll move on.

The second miniature is an archer to round off my small band of bowmen. I had previously made a "youngblood" (ie a novice fighter) with the lower half of a plastic flagellant, so I used this lower body to work as her skirt. I sculpted a torso around a piece of sprue, and added Frostgrave arms and a Stargrave head. Her magnificent hat was in my bits box. 

Here she is painted. I really like this model. My sculpting could be better, now I look at it, but I'm quite pleased with the results. I imagine that she might have been a professional archer, appearing in shows to entertain the people of Mordheim, before the comet struck and the city fell into chaos. Now she puts her skills to new uses, scouting in the ruins.

Even More Space Rogues, And Another Terrain Bit

 Last post, I forgot to add a piece of terrain. I also have been painting some more random Stargrave citizens. I really enjoy making these conversions, but they often end up on my desk for a long time, waiting for paint. 

The guy on the left has Stargrave head and arms, and a body from a sprue of zombies. I'm not sure who made them. He's some kind of angry redneck, and I painted him to look a bit like one of the guys in the old cartoon King of the Hill. 

Next to him is a female alien soldier. I always think of these guys as primitive androids, and painted her to fit in with the little unit of company robots that I made a while ago.

 

These two are made from historical bits. The crouching sniper has a body from a Perry Miniatures Afghan soldier and a head and guns from the Stargrave mercenaries. The lady in the purple shirt has a Bolt Action torso, and Stargrave head, arms and legs.

And this pair are unconverted metal miniatures from Copplestone. The guy on the left looks like a thug from the 1980s. The man on the right is some kind of dreadlocked cyberpunk. The thug is a pretty basic miniature and works fine, but the other guy is a really cool sculpt whole simplicity helps it greatly. He reminds me of one of the voodoo priests from William Gibson's excellent novel Count Zero.

And here's the bit of cyber terrain that I forgot about. It's some cheap leftover bits from some plastic robots (maybe Heroclix) with some bits and bobs stuck on for interest. The console is a Mantic part, and the aerial comes from a Necron gun. Beyond that, I'm not sure!

Two Small Bits of Terrain

 I've been making some bits of terrain this week.

This futuristic building was made from a printer ink cartridge on its end, stuck onto a leftover bit of textured MDF. Most of the details came from pieces of Mantic space terrain, some of them cut down to size. 

Here's the unpainted version. The painting was quite easy, with a dark brown wash for the weathering. I did want to paint some big hazard stripes over one side, but I soon discovered that I lack the neatness to do this, so I just went for a flat red. 

It's quite small, but would break up line of sight, and I quite like the raised height.

I also painted this outcrop of rocks. I bought it last year at a convention, for a couple of pounds. It's 3D printed, and has quite a lot of layer lines. I sanded it down a bit, but rocks are going to be a bit uneven (hopefully). Brown and green washes were used to make it look a bit more realistic, along with a static plant.

Van Saar Necromunda Gang 1

Ages and ages ago (at least a decade) my friend James got me some strange alien heads. I'm not sure who made them: it was a big company like Kromlech or Puppetswar, although neither of them seems to carry this product anymore. (If you do recognise them, let me know!) They remind me a bit of Giger's Alien, and the Borg queen from Star Trek. I like the design, especially the creepy blankness of their faces. They look like some kind of mixture of human and alien DNA, or maybe something very evil making a bad attempt at fitting in with the normals.

Anyhow, I've had these for ages and have never really found bodies to go with them. I happened to see a box of plastic House Van Saar Necromunda gangers going cheaply on ebay, recently. I've always liked the design of the Van Saars, as they have a sleek, techy feel unusual in Warhammer 40,000. I bought the plastics and stuck the weird alien heads on them.

After making loads of North Star plastic models, the Necromunda kit was a bit of a surprise. For one thing, there's very little option for converting or even adapting the models: you're meant to assemble them in one of two poses, and doing much else would be fiddly and difficult. For another, the legs and bodies go together and there's no real way of changing that. What this means is that the models are very "fixed", but they're also in very dynamic positions, especially compared to the North Star ones. You trade variety for dynamism. I've mixed feelings about this.

The heads worked fairly well on the new bodies. I decided to paint them in a vaguely "cyber" way, but without bright or healthy colours. The armour was worked up from dark grey, mixing in purple and crimson. This is a new style for me, but I really like the way it's come out. The faces were worked up from a sandy brown, adding bone and white, and not using any flesh tones so they would look pallid and unwholesome. I wasn't sure about the blue pads and the green details, which felt too bright, but I think they work overall.

And after all that... here they are.

More Mordheim Mercenaries

 Hello again! Here are a few more foppish-but-violent mercenaries to venture into Mordheim, like carrion-crows dressed up as peacocks. That was unusually poetic of me! For similar high-quality prose, please buy my books. All of them.

Anyhow, all of these are old models that I've spruced up. I tidied the painting generally, tried to make the leather look a bit more battered, and repainted the yellow fabric, now using a pink undercoat. I think it helps a lot. Also, I used a new technique on the faces, glazing them with heavily thinned Sigvald Burgundy to make them look ruddy and a bit unhealthy.

First up is a swordsman and a crossbowman. These guys are a mixture of Empire and Mordheim mercenary bits. The crossbowman has a head from a Bretonnian man at arms.

And here are two more crossbowmen. Again, they use Mordheim mercenary and Empire bits, particularly Empire cannon crew, who have the right sort of "casual" attire and rough clothing.

Here's a picture of some of the repainted guys. This isn't the whole warband - there are loads more, but these chaps are particularly fancy.

Next time, a bit of a change, as we take a trip to the neon streets of Necromunda...

Mordheim - Mercenaries and Monsters

 It's been a long time since I've done any fantasy models. In fact, the last fantasy model that I posted on this blog was in January. I certainly default to science fiction in modelling: the colours are more interesting (there's less brown to paint!) and there's more options for weird creatures and people. 

Anyway, this month I went back to Mordheim, and to finish off some models that I started a while ago and just abandoned.

First up, we've got two archers, painted in the black-and-yellow livery that I seem to have chosen for this warband. They use old Mordheim mercenary bodies and legs, with arms from the North Star Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago Crewmen sprue (catchy title). The first Frostgrave plastic soldiers were a little crude, to my mind, but these later models are really decent. The chap on the right has a Crewman head, too. 

Then we've got two oddballs. The little hobbit chap was an unconverted plastic miniature that came in a job lot of random models. He had a slotta tab, but it was blank. It seems that he was from either Talisman or Warhammer Quest (or possibly both). He actually looks like the man from the covers of Mad Magazine, so I painted him to resemble that guy. I'm generally not much of a hobbit fan, and it seems out of place that one of these tubby, barefoot yokel-children should be in the city of the damned, but what the heck.

The other fighter is a more complex conversion, designed to look like a tattered, weary veteran. He has a Mordheim left arm, the right arm of a Bretonnian knight, a Chaos marauder shield, a body and head from the Empire Pistoliers set (very good for bits), and legs from a 40k Chaos cultist. The bag attached to his belt is from Bolt Action. The weird fishy crest on his helmet came from an Empire cannon kit.

I really like the end result, although making him took ages. I like the idea of these guys wearing uniforms that were once flashy and ornate, and now are grubby and battered.

And that's not all! Here's a conversion that I did ages ago and never painted. It's a Chaos minion (unsurprisingly), based on an old metal sorcerer body. I gave him a genestealer head and a metal tentacle for a tail, as well as a right arm from a Necromunda Goliath bit. As I painted him, I was surprised by how detailed the basic metal body was. He's pretty manky.

I also found some counters for traps, that came in a Mantic terrain set many years ago. They were nice models, and easy to paint. 

Last and most definitely least, all the models in this post are standing on a base plate painted to resemble paving stones. This was a piece of MDF with lines scored into it. I've no idea who sold it. I painted it grey, with a few stones painted in brighter shades for variety. I painted the upper edge of each stone slightly lighter, to give the impression of light coming from one source and catching on the edge of the stones. I think this is called trompe d'oeil. A little bits of brown dirt and green moss was added on with thinned paint. It's not perfect, but it will work as an interesting base for photography.

I've got a few Mordheim warbands painted, but I did them a few years ago, and they'd be much better if I painted them now. I might try to tidy up my older painting and make a few improvements. We shall see!

For A Few Eldar More

 Here are a few more of the excellent old Eldar guardian models. On the right is a really old guardian from the Rogue Trader days. He was missing his head, so I gave him one from a dark eldar that's quite similar to the original.

Beside him is an Eldar knight from the old Epic game. The knights are rather weird, gawky models, but this particular one is about the right size and shape to help out. If it became necessary, I'd count it as an additional guardian.

And here is the whole bunch. I do like their blue armour!

Next time, we're back in Mordheim...

Scratch-Built Moon Truck

 

Once again, I've been trying to use up some of the many bits that I've accumulated for excellent projects that never quite came to fruition. 

A little while ago I made an ork battlewagon, which looks like this:

In doing so, I bought a resin battlewagon from Ebay, which I'd intended to use as the basis for the battlewagon itself. I ended up only using the wheels for my version, which left me with a load of resin bits including a body that looked like a massive lump of white chocolate.

Also in the bits box were two, er, side pieces from a Ramshackle Games APC-type vehicle. I have no idea why I own these, especially since I had three of them. Maybe I over-ordered many years ago? I also had no wheels to go with them. Genius. However, I discovered that the side bits fitted the white-chocolate resin bit really well. 

I boxed in the rear of the vehicle with plasticard and then got to work covering it in greebles - that is, bits of interesting, superfluous detail. Many GW human vehicles have plates on them, which sometimes have little gaps between them. I tried to simulate this with different shapes and thicknesses of plasticard. 

The underside shows how the large random lumps of resin went together.

Further greebling occurred.

The bits came from all sorts of places: some Warlord Games turrets from an armoured car; two ventilation units made by TT Combat; a Mantic gun - anything that looked interesting and vaguely industrial, really. My favourite bit is a toolbox from a Gaslands sprue. I considered buying some resin wheels, but I'm cheap, so I got some Lego ones off ebay. And they worked surprisingly well!

The thing I ended up with looked like a cross between a military truck and a moon rover. It clearly needed an industrial paint job. I went with a light grey, because you can do a lot of weathering on that. For the first time, I used an oil wash to simulate dirt and grime: I used burnt umber from Windsor and Newton, watered down with white spirit. To be honest, while this was a bit better than just painting the dirt on, I didn't think that it was amazing.

Headlights, an abandoned toolbox and some kind of tube added a bit of colour to the model. Overall, I think it might be a bit over-weathered, and you can see that the tyres say "Lego" if you look closely, but I think it's come out pretty well given how it started. A weekend well spent!

Hideous Chaos Terminator Snake Eel Spawn Thing

 I've been dipping into the huge pile of unpainted miniatures this week, and I've started all sorts of random things. I've got another couple of armoured eldar guardians on the go, a couple of fancy space marines of the Shining Knights chapter, and a thug with a shotgun that I can barely identify.

But none of these are finished, so instead let's turn to PLEASURES OF THE FLESH. By which I mean chaos marines, influenced by the sinister god Slaanesh. This week, Games Workshop released new models for the Emperor's Children, the debauched minions of the pleasure god. This reminded me to get on with a miniature that I've had lying about for ages: I had the concept in my mind, found the relevant pieces, and then did nothing. Until now.

I thought it would be cool to make a terminator marine with the lower body of a snake, a sort of hideous fleshy worm-man. It's probably quicker if I do a list of the bits:

Head - chaos spawn

Left arm - fantasy ghoul

Right arm - Space Wolves heavy flamer with a chaos knight shoulder pad

Front body - chaos terminator

Rear body - multi-melta left over from a plastic dreanought

Lower body/tail - tyranid ravener, with a chaos tank part on the end of the tail.

That's most of it. The great advantage with all this is that I didn't need to buy any terminators. Here's the work in progress.

I think "busy" is a fair descruption. Here he is with paint. I cut the spines off his back, to make him look sleeker and less like a tyranid, and added a sort of sock thing to his tail.

I've just realised that I didn't finish off his shoulder pad, so apologies for that. I'm quite tired of painting pink flesh now. He looks as if he could join Gwar.

Here is the delightful snake-creature with his other terminator friends, most of whom include an absolute minimum of terminator parts. I painted them a few years ago, so they're not quite up to my current standards, but together they make a suitably weird and spiky unit.