Sentinel

At an event last year, I picked up an Imperial Guard sentinel. It was the old plastic-and-metal armoured variety, without poseable legs, and it was going for £5 because it didn't have any feet.

I cast some new feet out of green stuff, using some old metal titan feet. The end result was quite good, but getting the old legs to fit onto the new feet, and making sure that the join was solid, was really difficult. I ended up making some shields for the feet (and one knee) out of ogre kingdoms fist armour, which gave it much more solidity. I think they work alright, as they might be some sort of crude additional protection added by the crew, to guard against attacks on the lower joints in urban combat and kroot-hound pee when the sentinel is standing still.

Beyond that, the roof was made of plasticard bits and pieces, and the bolts on the roof (which you probably can't see) are dots of superglue. That's about it, I think. Oh - the manhole-type thing on the base came from a kit of basing bits. That really is it!

From Commissar to Rogue Trader

I'm working my way (very slowly) through my huge box of models that seemed a good idea to purchase at the time. One was a commissar-lord that I got cheaply, because he didn't have any arms. Now, for ages I've wanted to make a model of Isambard Smith, the hero of the books I wrote a while ago (which you can buy HERE if so inclined. They're very funny, I promise). Smith looks rather like this:

I thought that with a bit of work the Commissar might be quite good - not as Smith himself, but as a sort of Warhammerised version. With that, I de-skulled the model, so he'd look more like a Victorian and less like a Nazi, and added some arms from the excellent Tempestus Scions kit and a sabre that I cut from a sprue of Waterloo-type people (goodness knows where I got them from).

Then it was just a matter of painting him. It made a change to be painting an SF model in bright colours, but there's a hell of a lot of detail on this chap, and it took ages. Still, I'm pleased with the result, especially his face. He isn't Space Captain Smith, but if there's a Rogue Trader Smithius out there, this is him.

Space Precinct

Back to our usual (vaguely) regular schedule of (possibly) informative articles about modelmaking. This week, I had a go at the vehicle and headquarters of the security team that I made a couple of weeks ago.

The vehicle is a hummer, which I bought at an event and which came as a large single lump of resin. The detailing was actually pretty good, although there were some odd bits around the wheels which I just painted black. It was strange trying to paint a vehicle in a roughly realistic fashion. I even used a bit of weathering powder (if that's the stuff) around the wheels.

I think it looks suitably battered. I didn't go over the top with detail or shading because, oddly, that looked rather unrealistic. Anyway, it should make a reasonable addition to the vehicle pool an a good transport for the security guys if ever they need one.

The second item (which pretty much finishes the unit off) is a building for the security guys to hide in. It was from Troll Trader, and cost about £4. As with a lot of Troll Trader stuff, it was made from MDF slightly thicker than that used by other companies and, while slightly basic, it looks like what it claims to be.

I added a few details to the model: some posters from a sheet of 40k designs for the walls, wire mesh on the windows (I bought a sheet of mesh at the local craft shop), a small box on the roof and a bit of machinery that provides power or something inside. This year's entirely random scenery purchase was a box of resin air-conditioning units, and I stuck one of them on the front. After all, if you're going to be guarding a dangerous border town in some ramshackle post-apocalyptic future, you might as well do it at a reasonable temperature.

I did contemplate adding chairs or a table, but they would get in the way of putting models inside. That does always seem to be a problem with the more complex terrain features: either they really don't let you move models very well, or they take up so much space that any game would have to centre around them.

Here's a shot of the interior, looking rather primitive. A space policeman's lot is not a happy one!

Tune in next time for medieval peasants (possibly)!

Welcome to the Guard

While the effectiveness of the Imperial Guard has varied from time to time, it has always been an inescapable truth that the individual guardsman is crap. That's the point of the army, really: the Guard are (or is?) a horde army, using loads of little people to wear down the enemy by force of numbers. What this adds up to is that the average unit of guardsmen makes the cast of Dad's Army look like the Special Operations Executive.

Of course, in a smaller-scale setting, one man can make more of a difference. I found a few old Guard models, added weapons where necessary from the ever-excellent Genestealer Acolytes set, and painted them up to look like a second-rate security team, rather like the not-very-fearsome riot police in the 1970s Dawn of the Dead. I think the lack of uniform gear rather helps.

The other reason why they're in blue is that they don't clash too much with my genestealer cultists ("they don't clash" - what is this, a fashion show?), and so could pass as recruits if needed to bulk out the numbers. They've got similar (ie rubbish) stats to low-level cultists, and so could easily join the ranks with the rest of the cannon fodder.

I'm expecting a Beastie Boys cover out of these guys

These aren't the best-painted models I've ever done, but they'll be fine (probably). The face on the middle chap was either a bit miscast or not a great sculpt: I've done what I can, really.

The sunglasses are a feeble attempt to look tough and competent

These two look a bit more professional. They're still really old sculpts (they both appear in the ancient blue Citadel catalogue) but I added new plastic arms, which fitted remarkably well.

Last weekend I went to Colours at Newbury Racecourse. It wasn't quite as good for random broken stuff as last year, but I did manage to pick up a few decent things. One of them was this whopping great lump of resin in the shape of a Hummer armoured car. Ideal for the security forces, or the genestealer cult.