Space Marine Whirlwind Conversion (and bonus rhino)

 Last time, I made a whopping great cannon to go on the roof of a space marine Rhino. I also promised further silliness. And I've been hard at work to do just that.

Back in the days, I purchased a plastic Empire hellsturm rocket launcher, a sort of multiple firework array on a cannon chassis. I put this onto a Rhino to make a very medieval Whirlwind tank.

The basis of the conversion is one of the plates that goes on the back of the Rhino. The Vindicator cannon lifts off, and I used the plate with a hole for a hatch in it. I put a Lego cog into the hole and stuck it in place with plasticard, to be the part that the launcher sits on. Here's a picture of a normal plate and my version.

The rocket launcher went on top. I added a piece that holds some extra rockets, in case the marines get excited and fire all their fireworks at once. 

It was painted in suitably jolly and heraldic colours, to match the overall scheme.

Whoosh!

Now, I thought it would be good to finish this project off by making a flat panel to go on the top, for when the marines just need nothing fancier than a Rhino. I found some doors and glued them together.

I wanted to decorate the doors, but I know my limits. There's no way that I could do the sort of freehand that wins modern competition. But I could draw as well as a medieval monk who's never left his cloiser, and so that's what I did. Hence this:

That looks suitably antiquated. Here it is on the tank.

That was fun!

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.

Knight Armiger (and an angry farmer)

 It's been both really busy and pretty quiet here, what with Christmas and the surrounding chaos. I've had chunks of rushing out to do stuff followed by bouts of free time. I've been using that free time to finally make and paint an imperial knight armiger that I've had lying around for about three years.

Back in 2022, I made this:

While the first model was converted to fit into my Chaos marine army, I thought it would be nice to build the other armiger in the style of my knightly space marines. That would involve lots of heraldry in jolly colours. The large base meant that I'd be able to make a little diorama, to give the impression that something is going on down there.

I used foamboard and clay to put some different heights on the base. I found a Frostgrave plastic soldier and a metal dog from Warlord Games, and stuck them on. The dog is chasing the titan, clearly annoyed by it, and the yokel chap is either saying hello or shouting at the titan to get off his land. 

Otherwise, the titan is pretty much as it came out of the box. I sculpted a little banner over its head, with the pilot's name on it - this is Sir Ewain - but that's it. This took a lot of time, and there are elements that I'm not all that happy about, but overall I really like it. 

It's quite silly but I like the idea of having something interesting going on around the machine. I'm tempted to get some more of these knight models - probably a bad idea, as I've got a lot of other things to get on with. Still, at lease I've finally found a use for that axe and tree stump!

Medieval Dreadnought Conversion

 This week, I found some very old 40k vehicles that I made about 15 years ago. They weren't great to begin with, and they'd got battered after a trip to the attic, so I thought I'd have a go at rebuilding one of them. I wanted it to fit in with the rest of my marines, who have a jolly, knightly look.

This is a conversion of an old plastic dreadnought, using (mainly) the upper body of a dreadnought and the legs of a plastic sentinel. The sentinel legs were bulked out with two wheels and some plasticard. The kneepads came from an old plastic chaos knight, and the loincloth was an old plastic cloak. The exhausts were given some plastic chaos tank bits for bonus medievalism.

The right arm of the dreadnought is a standard twin lascannon. The right arm has a metal cannon part that I got in a job lot of bits years ago. I think it's from an ancient steam tank. The dreadnought got plates on his thighs, which came from a dreadnought shin guard which I sliced in half (I couldn't find two).

The shields on the front were bits of plasticard, sanded to shape and painted with heraldry. The head comes from an Imperial Knight, although I cut the lower half off. To begin with, I thought the head was too big and looked silly, but I've got used to it and frankly the whole thing is a bit silly. The little emblem on the top was once on a Bretonian knight's helmet. 

Let's call him Mordread. 

More Space Marines!

 I was looking in the bits box recently and discovered that I've got a load of unpainted space marines, most of them metal. I really ought to paint more of the stuff I've got before I forget that I've got it.

Here are four marines - more accurately, three marines and one marine-shaped ork tinboy. The tinboys were primitive robots that the orks made as caricatures of their enemies, back in 2nd edition 40k (or possibly even earlier than that). I didn't have an ork army back then, and I suspect that I bought them just for sheer silliness value. 

This is Sir Vile the Minion and Sir Spicious the Questionable. Sir Vile was made from a range of plastic parts: he's got a Space Wolf gun, a Mordheim belt buckle and a head from a Bretonnian man at arms. I think it fits the concept quite well.

Sir Spicious is an unconverted ork tinboy model. His left shoulder pad bears his "personal heraldry".

These two are a bit more sensible: Sir Tanty the Absolute and Sir Plus de Requirements.

Sir Tanty was based on one of the "masters of the chapter" that I bought incomplete off ebay a while ago. I added his head and gun. He took quite a long time to paint, but I'm pleased with the way he's come out, especially his face (although he does look quite surprised to be having his picture taken).

Sir Plus was converted by someone else when I bought it. I tidied the conversion up and finished it off before painting it. It's a good conversion, and it took me ages to work out that the base model was an old metal Ultramarines Chaplain Cassius. I never much liked the Cassius model, with its weird skull head, and this is definitely an improvement. He does look slightly as if he's dancing, but maybe he's just acting up for the camera.

Old Metal Space Marines

 I've been pretty busy with my new novel over the last few weeks, but I've managed to paint a few old metal space marine models in the meantime. Although Games Workshop is determined to phase out the little marines, there are some excellent miniatures there, from different periods of GW's history.

These two models are pretty ancient. The guy on the left is from the not-quite-Rogue-Trader period, and appears in the old blue Citadel catalogue. He's wearing what in the 40th millennium is called a Crux Terminatus, and in the rap game is a phat gold rope. He looks pretty pleased with himself. The chap next to him is a 1990s Space Wolf leader. 

These next two are a bit newer. The man on the left is a plastic marine body with a Bretonnian knight's head. I thought it suited the knightly feel of my chapter. His right shoulder pad was painted by a friend of mine who died a long time ago: I ended up with quite a lot of her old miniatures. I thought it was fitting to leave it as it was. Next to him is a veteran marine from the 2000s. I think this last set of metal veterans are some of the best marines that GW has ever made. They're covered in interesting details and are all really well sculpted. I doubt metal rank-and-file models have ever been much better.

The third pair are also veteran miniatures. They were in a job lot of slightly damaged marines. The chap on the left has a new head, and was missing the end of his mace. I used the top of a Sigmarine's hammer to finish his weapon off. The other guy was assembled without conversion. He's a super miniature.

*

 I also decided to join in a challenge that Darren Latham has created on Instagram. The idea is that you paint a very old plastic space marine from a 1990s set. I'm usually wary of these kinds of things, as inevitably someone (well, most people) will do much better than I will, but I thought "What the heck" and decided to give it a go. Here is the plastic model. He's a leader of some sort, and he is not the greatest miniature I've ever seen.

If you like Mordheim or Assassin's Creed, check out my Dark Renaissance novels HERE

Stormcast Terminators

 Where were you when you got your first sigmarine? Round about 2015, when Age of Sigmar replaced Warhammer Fantasy Battle, it seemed very hard to avoid the things. They were the poster children of AoS, and clearly designed to be the fantasy equivalent of Space Marines: heavily armoured, available in a range of colours, very solid in game terms and - most importantly - really really big. 

I've had a few of them knocking around from a couple of starter sets. They've never appealed to me: for one thing, they seem out of scale, and for another I just don't like the concept. They have many of the less interesting features of medieval knights, without the good stuff. For a while, I've considered converting them to be Space Marine terminators, where their excessive size would represent extra armour. (I'm also not that keen on the existing terminator models, anyway.)

First up was a Sigmarine that I'd started to convert ages ago and then forgotten about. I simply put a gun in his right hand (this was the storm bolter from an old Rhino), and substituted his shield hand for a power fist. His head, as with all the heads in this post, was from a Grey Knights terminator, and his backpack was a resin piece left over from some Forge World Heresy models. Unlike the others, this model didn't have a sculpted base, so I used cardboard, plasticard and bits of rock to give him something to stand on.

Here he is painted, in the bright heraldic colours I use for my marines.

Last week, I was in the local gaming shop and saw a sprue for an Adeptus Mechanicus Praetorian Servitor on the front of Exterminatus magazine. Like a lot of the Admech models, the Praetorian looks like a pretty good conversion rather than a finished model, somehow, and contains a lot of useful bits that I could cut off and stick to other things. I bought the sprue and got to work.

I cut one of the Sigmarines in half and replaced the torso with the Praetorian one. The gun also came from the Praetorian. It was surprisingly awkward, and a lot of green stuff was involved, which I'd usually prefer to avoid.

The gun looked rather weird in its original over-the-shoulder bazooka type position, so I turned it upside-down and stuck the barrel on the other end, so that it would hang under the shoulder mounting. I think this looks better. Some plasticard was needed to balance it out and fill up the gaps.

Then it was time for paint. I'm quite pleased with the bluing on his gun, and for once the blue plasma effect on the barrel doesn't look entirely awful:

The third terminator was made from another robed Sigmarine. It was a simpler conversion, requiring a new right arm and a power fist for the left. I do like the pose of this model. It's a bit "knitwear catalogue" but it's also quite dramatic.

And here are all three. I like them much better this way!

 

Space Knight and Flying Marine!

It feels like ages since I posted here - it's actually eight days. In that time, I've painted a couple more space marines. 

Our first chap is another cloaked space knight type. He's a bladeguard veteran from the Black Templars. He's a metal model from that period where GW's metal models had reached a peak: really detailed and nicely sculpted, with tons of interesting stuff hanging off his armour. I made one tiny conversion, to replace a skull on his cloak-fastener (or whatever it is) with a plastic grail from the Blood Angels Sanguinary Guard set, of which more shortly.

Here he is, looking fancy. I tried a scuffed leather effect on his cloak, but it might actually be too subtle! More scuffing is clearly required.

I've had a few old Dark Angel bodies - the robed sort - lying around for a while, and I thought it would be cool to use them as a particular sort of space knight.

While most of the Shining Knights favour close combat, some bold warriors use jump packs to hurl themselves at the foe. Their zeal for battle and their white robes has earned them the title of the Brotherhood of the Jumping Monks. While some see this as undignified, it certainly works. Many enemies of the Jumping Monks have thought "I can see up your habit", just before their doom crashes down from above. 

I decided to make a leader for this unit, who would be much fancier than his colleagues. I built him out of a Dark Angels body and Sanguinary Guard arms and head, with a green stuff hood.

A suitably colossal sword!

Unexciting rear view

He needed a jump pack, so I used a Sanguinary Guard one with wings. Classy! After all that, it seemed only right to paint him in as showy a way as possible, so all his wings and laurels got a brass colour.

I painted the brass with brass over a black overcoat to start with, and then washed the whole thing with chestnut ink. Once that was dry, I added darker shadows at the edges of the feathers - basically, the dark recesses - with strong tone. I then highlighted by adding silver to the brass colour. I think this gives the brass a nice rich feel.

Silly? Yes. Impressive? Hopefully. I certainly wouldn't want this chap to drop out of the sky onto my head.

Close observers might notice that he's holding his enormous sword in a slightly unusual way. Apparently, this is a legitimate Renaissance style. Frankly, I doubt it would matter much: he could just bounce onto his enemies and squash them. Although that might cramp his style.

EDIT: Last night I had a go at photographing a couple of marine squads. It's not perfect, but I suspect that, without a different camera, this is the best that it's going to get.