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...

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!

Introspective Retrospective 2023

 So, 2023 comes to an end. It's been a fairly drab one here in the UK, and hopefully 2024 will be an improvement. I've had a busy time making models this year, and here are the highlights.

For me, 2023's big project has been retro Eldar. I've painted a lot of models, including some great Jes Goodwin metal miniatures. I went for colours inspired by old, trippy science fiction, especially the pictures of Moebius, Chris Foss and Roger Dean.

Here are some vehicles.

Converted "Vitriol" skimmers

Converted jetbike squad

Wave Serpent

Another Wave Serpent

And some infantry:

Scouts

Fire Dragons

Swooping Hawks

Harlequins

And a couple of oddities, which aren't GW models but still work for the Eldar:

Not a Grynx

Not a Farseer

*

So, that's the Eldar. I also did some other models. I painted a rather stoned-looking dragon that I'd had knocking around for ages:

I also made a couple of gangs for Mordheim:

Heavily-converted Sisters of Sigmar

Marienberger mercenaries

But really, I save the silliest for last. I made a model of the Black Beast of Aaargh from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Most of it was sculpted by me, except the head.

*

The final thing isn't a model at all. It's a book called Legion of Bones, the third in my fantasy trilogy Dark Renaissance. It's a tale of murder and intrigue, set against a massive uprising by a horde of undead. All three of my fantasy novels are available HERE  - trust me, I'm a much better writer than I am a painter.

So it's been quite a busy year. I'm pleased with the progress I've made in painting. Eldar are rather unforgiving models, and require a "clean" painting style that I find tricky. I've really enjoyed painting them, and making the kind of army that I would have really liked to own thirty years ago!

Here's my favourite model of this year, the leader of the converted Vitriol squad. I hope you have a very happy new year, and lots of enjoyment and success with your models in 2024. 

Cheers!

Toby.

A Tank For The Chaos Marines

I had wanted to go up to Bring Out Your Lead this year, but for real-world reasons (the real world is being tediously intrusive into my magical fantasy land right now) I couldn't make it. So I did some more work on the old Chaos marines instead. Here is the next batch of five.

With the exception of the chap with the big blue sword, they've all been converted in some way, or have had non-regulation parts added (actually, he's got an old ork bolter, but I don't think that really "counts"). As before, the painting is "experimental" (ie ropey), but I think the touches of colour on the various models help a lot. So they're not my favourite unit, but they're interesting and they're a lot better than they were before. I've now got a squad of 10 of these unfortunates.

*

I've also had a go at making a tank for the Chaos people. Given that I'll have at least 20 models on foot, I thought I ought to give them a transport. The obvious choice is a chaos rhino, but they really are boring looking things. The rhino is an old kit, at least 15 years old, and it's never been an exciting design. It lacks either the sleek menace of the Aliens APC or the crude, WW1 brutality of the Leman Russ.

Added to that, it's difficult to "chaosify" a vehicle. Just sticking a load of spikes on top looks a bit naff, to my mind, and some of the conversions I've seen, while impressively wacky, are very specific in terms of which Chaos power they represent, and feel a bit too bonkers to me.

So I went with something entirely different. It's a Mantic Sturnhammer battle tank (are there non-battle tanks?) for their not-squats faction. It would usually be £30, which seems a bit steep for what you get, but I found it for £20 on ebay.

As I've found with Mantic vehicles, the detail isn't great, but it goes together very easily and wasn't a pain to assemble. Three separate turrets were included with the model - so you could assemble all three and swap them depending on what gun you wanted, unlike a GW tank. Oddly, you can't swap between the APC and the tank version, which require different rear compartments. I assembled the tank version, because it looks cooler and you never know when you'll need some big guns.

Virtually no conversion work was required. I didn't like the end of the gun barrels on the quad autocannon or whatever it is, so I cut them down a bit and drilled some holes for the barrels. Otherwise, it's as designed. I think it has a suitably aggressive profile, and looks mean enough to be transporting chaos marines, but not too over-the-top.

I'll just have to paint the marines who'll be using it now.

Hovercoaster Pt 2

I've been working on the hovercraft/submarine/skimmer machine from last post. The first and most major addition was a pair of mechanical arms scavenged off the "Galvanic Servohaulers" terrain kit.

I decided to paint the large circular bits on the Devilfish's doors as portholes. However, that meant that I'd be using "painted-on" glass as well as the transparent cockpit bits I'd had planned for the turret. After conferring with the chaps, I decided that this wasn't really viable, and removed the turret altogether. Instead, I added a hatch made from parts of an old bunker model, and a funnel that had originally been the base of a street-light from a WW2 scenery set. The periscope was a chimney-pipe from an old Empire house, with a light stuck to the front. They go back to the nautical theme quite nicely.

(The pliers are in lieu of a proper flying stand, so I can hold it up without my fat fingers getting into the picture.)

The next thing was to actually paint this machine. Yellow for the hull seemed right, given the submersible theme, and white for the upper parts worked for a boat. I made sure both were dirty and heavily chipped: this feels right for an industrial vessel and hides the rather ropey state of the basic model.

So there it is! It's been a fun project - although this thing still needs a base - and once again I've made something whose function I've no real idea about. I expect it hovers out in the badlands, collecting scrap for repair back at the township. Something like that.

I think it would make a rather good objective, or an unusual terrain piece. Perhaps I ought to write some rules for this vehicle. Or maybe it needs a crew...