Some 15mm 30k Characters - Pt 1

30k Characters for my 15mm Sons of Horus collection. 

As I get older, I find myself exclaiming words to the effect of "wow, it's already [INSERT MONTH]!" more and more often. This post is no exception...wow, it's already November! And I'm still posting up stuff I painted in the late summer! Oh well, better late than never, I hope. With that all out of the way I present a few more 15mm 30k characters. These little guys are all amazing 3D prints from Byron.

One great thing about the 15mm 30k stuff is that it travels pretty easily, so I tossed a bunch of the figures into a box during the summer and brought them with me to the cabin back in August for some relaxing summer painting by the lake. Here we have a small group of characters for the XVI Legion Astartes, the Sons of Horus. In this batch we find a Praetor, a Librarian and a veteran sergeant. All are wearing glorious Mark VI "beakie" armour. 

The "Axehole", ready to conquer in the name of the Warmaster.

Obligatory skullz and oversized cloak present ant correct!

These prints are all tremendous fun. Whoever did the digital sculpts was clearly a fan of the setting, and these are excellent reproductions of their 28mm brethren. I particularly love the "Axehole" Praetor...he certainly looks the part of a Sons of Horus commander!

Power armour AND a tabard? Why not? He has SPOOKY POWERS after all...

"Soon I will throw this fireball at you...but I just want to look at it first..."

The Librarian has the necessary sinister cloak, because obviously. The little ball of blue flame in his hand is a nice touch too. 

"Not that way. THIS WAY. Move it, morons!"

Trusty helmet clipped to his belt. Why would he need it? He's a veteran!

And the veteran...well, he looks like a grouch! You'd be mad too if you had to have studs drilled into your forehead because reasons. Anyway, he is doing one of the most important thing that figures representing junior officers on a wargaming table must do - he is pointing at something!

I'm not really painting these up with a specific plan in mind, beyond trying to keep an approximate balance between loyalist and rebel forces in my painted collection. These little 15mm guys were a lot of fun to paint up during the summer. Up next I'll show some of the Loyalist characters who came off the painting line. 

Some More Battlefront Pzkpfw. IVs

Well there seemed to be little interest on my post about military watches (thanks for the comment though Greg!) so it's back to wargames figures... you guys must be heartily sick of seeing Afrika Korps armour but we're getting towards the end here, I promise. These are the last three tanks to be painted for the DAK as I've got no more bare plastic to assemble.

As you can see there are two "Mark IV Specials" equipped with the long 75mm KwK 40 L/43. This was temporarily designated by the Germans as the "Ausf. F2" and was the scourge of the desert!

The tanks were painted with a basecoat of XV88 overpainted with Tallarn Sand, then washed Agrax Earthshade and re-highlighted with Tallarn. Decals were then applied and some chipping done with German Camo Black Brown.

I might paint some armoured cars or halftracks and trucks for the DAK, but that's it for tanks, I promise.

Heia Safari!

Some Military Horology!

From time to time (heh) on this blog I digress into different subjects unrelated (or only tangentially related) to wargaming. One of my many non-wargaming hobbies is horology... the study (and in my case, collecting) of watches. Combining this interest with another of my interests obsessions, military history, makes for an fascinating intersection.

This is a lovely piece isn't it! It's a Heuer "Bundeswehr" 1550 SG flyback chronograph. These were issued to the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) in the Cold War - particularly in the 1960s and 70s.

The case is stainless steel of course, you can see the four fixing screws right next to the lugs. The Bundeswehr item number is stamped on the caseback, note that this isn't the serial number... that is stamped on the side of the case between the lugs.

On the other side of the case is the manufacturer's model designation - 1550 SG.

The watch came from the seller on a very nice grey leather strap but I immediately ordered an NOS Bundeswehr strap from Jurgen's in Germany.

The strap design is now commonly known as "Bundeswehr" due to its association with this watch. It's a three-piece leather item - a two-piece buckled 20mm strap attaching to the watch between the lugs as usual, and the third piece being a flat oval leather pad fitting underneath the watch case. Supposedly this is due to the watch being used by pilots in the Bundesluftwaffe (air force) where the temperatures in the cockpit could vary from freezing to very hot, and the leather pad was supposed to insulate the pilot's wrist from the hot or cold stainless caseback.

  

Accession number stamped on the strap as well.

Here's a better view of the full strap.

I really like the dial design of this watch. The bezel rotates of course, to keep track of elapsed time. The subdial at the left runs the seconds, the subdial at right keeps track of chrono elapsed time up to 30 minutes, and the chronograph second hand (seen at one o'clock here) is started and stopped by the top pusher, while the bottom pusher resets the chrono second hand from being stopped. HOWEVER... if you push the bottom button while the chronograph is running, the chrono second hand flies back to 12 and restarts automatically. Hence "flyback".

The "3H" in circle is typical of the Bundeswehr issued watches, it signifies that the markers and hands are coated in tritium, which glows in the dark ("3H" is the chemical symbol for tritium, 3 is the mass number and H is for hydrogen of course). Just so there's no mistaking this there is also a tiny "T" over the 6.

Of course there's prominent "Heuer" branding here as this watch predates the 1985 acquisition of the company by the TAG Group, the watches thereafter being branded TAG Heuer.

The Bundeswehr strap makes the watch wear even larger than it is and my wrist isn't huge, so I've been wearing the watch on a one-piece nylon NATO strap.

I was really happy to pick up this watch as I've wanted a Heuer Bundeswehr flyback chrono for years, it was one of my grail watches. They're not that rare but there is a really weird variation of the piece called the "Sternzeit Reguliert" (regulated star-time) that was used by the artillery and was set to "sidereal time" (based on earth's motion relative to distant stars rather than the Sun). A sidereal day is 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds. Try that as your excuse next time you're a few minutes late for a meeting ;-)

I find this stuff fascinating, but if you want a deep dive into the Heuer Bundeswehr watch you can have a look at this site.

Next up is the watch I wear when doing Great War living history. It's a "Queen Anne" hand-winder from West End Watch Company. This is also a fully original piece.

The strap is great, it's from vintagewatchstraps.com and this guy is a real artisan. I sprung for the hallmarked sterling silver buckle and it is just lovely.

Some honest wear on the dial here but the watch winds well and keeps reasonable time at events. The Great War was the real origin of the men's wristwatch and the start of a fashion that survives to this day. Strangely enough, for a time after the war, some veterans resented civilian non-veterans wearing wristwatches - stolen valour! Pretty wild stuff.

Moving forward about 25 years, here's a Swiss watch issued to the German army in the Second World War. The Germans made use of a lot of Swiss watches for their armed forces, including this example by ARSA (A. Reymond SA). It's a handwinder too, as all of these watches are, and is marked "Watertight", "Shock-resistant", and "Anti-magnetic" on the face. All of these properties are important in a military watch, as magnetic fields can affect the running of the watch.

What marks this watch as military issue is the stamp on the case - "DH" stands for Deutsches Heer, the German army. The serial number is stamped between the letters.

Here's a pocket watch from the same maker. My wife got this for me as a wedding present. 

Also "DH" marked, naturally. Nice watch but not many people wear pocket watches anymore do they!
 

Lastly here's a cool RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) service watch by Waltham. Like the ARSA wristwatch it's pretty petit by today's standards but it's in very nice condition with what I believe is an original nylon strap.

Military accession number on this one as well (I think the /42 indicates wartime issue) but it's the paperwork that came with it that's really remarkable...

Check this out, original Air Force paperwork! "Requires overhaul"

Here's the evidence it was overhauled... in 1965! Who says the military is wasteful... this watch may have been in service for over 20 years.

Tested and accurate to within 30sec/day... it's no quartz watch or iPhone but not bad for an old hand-winder - keep in mind that the "COSC standard" for accuracy of mechanical watches established by the Controle Officielle Suisse des Chronometres is -4s/+6s per day. I only have one chronometer in my collection (a Tissot Janeiro chronograph) so I'm not super-fussed. These watches are of interest for their intricate mechanical function and aesthetic appeal, not their super-accurate timekeeping.  

Anyway I hope you enjoyed this digression and if you are worried about spending money on awesome watches, you should really stay far away from chrono24.ca!

MOAR!! Flames of War 8th Army Tanks and Artillery

Cleaning up a few remnants of boxed sets I've bought for the Western Desert project. I'd already painted the Grants from the "Monty's Desert Rats" box but that left these three Crusaders and the two artillery pieces to do. First up, the armour...

Here are the three Crusaders, equipped with 6-pounder guns (I'm concentrating on "after-El-Alamein"). As usual I picked out one to have a commander sticking out of the hatch. Camo was two-colour in keeping with the rest of the force. 

The Battlefront material had limited images of the Crusader so I had to look on the web to see how the camo looked on the "other side" of the vehicle. Fortunately "Key Model World" came to the rescue with copious photos of a 1/32 Airfix build here. Thanks John Bonanni!

As with all of the British armour, the tanks were painted Light Earth as a base, with camo done in Castellan Green highlighted Deathworld Forest. The whole thing was washed Agrax Earthshade then re-highlighted in the base colours, and lastly chipped with German Camo Black-Brown on a sponge.

I also had one Honey built so I painted that too. It's a model from Plastic Soldier Company and don't be too hard on me if you see inaccuracies in the build... I basically wanted to replicate the sand-skirted model that Battlefront makes but I'm not sure I built exactly the right combo of top hatch and skirts... looks fine to me if I squint.

These are certainly iconic little desert tanks aren't they! I still have four more to build...

Now to the guns! The box set came with two sprues that could built as either 25-pounder field guns or 17/25-pounder antitank guns. But since we have the means, I figured why not make the tubes swappable and have both??

The accessories and crew for the models are great. Here we see a 25-pounder.

And here are the models with the 17-pounder tube swapped in for maximum anti-tank capability.

Easy to do, really - that's a small disc magnet in between the trunnion supports...

...and on the 17-pounder tube there's a 2mm spacer and another disc magnet. The 25-pounder tube didn't need a magnet and adding one would lower the muzzle too much anyway, so I just added a small piece of very thin sheet metal to stick to the magnet. Easy swapping and nothing is visible.

And there you go, some more models for Conscript Hugh to figure into the British army list for our next desert clash.

Toodles! 

Another Command Flunky for 30k - Loyalist Overseer Consul

Loyalist Overseer Consul - ready to provide all manner of "encouragement"...

Some more painting to share - here is a "Loyalist Overseer Consul", the latest in a lengthening line of assorted command-level flunkies to be found among the Space Marine Legions of GW's "Age of Darkness", a.k.a the Horus Heresy. This is a 28mm multi-part resin-plastic figure from GW, and he is painted in the colours of the VII Legion Astartes, the Imperial Fists.

View of the shoulder bling.

Not so fancy from the back...

The "Overseer Consul" is intended to be a senior figure commanding/inspiring the throngs of Auxilia and Militia called to arms in order to aid the defence of The Emperor's domains in the face of The Warmaster's betrayal. A great many of these soldiers volunteered to serve, but we expect that a much greater number of these were simply pressed into service. We can imagine the "direct touch" the Imperium would apply when it comes to matters of military conscription.

Fancy helmet and associated decorations? Why of course!

At any rate, these lesser soldiers might need a bit of help when attempting to face down an assault by traitor Space Marines. That "help" might come in many forms...inspiration? Encouragement? A pretty clear and concise explanation of what will happen if they fall back? Some combination of all three perhaps? This fellow appears well-equipped to apply any of these means of "persuasion" - the ornate armour, the comb on the helmet, the tabard and back banner, the Crozius-style baton, the plasma pistol, and, of course a couple of skulls to top the whole thing off...

Feel the oversight!

Whether this fellow serves as an "Overseer" or just as some other brand of officer or consul, I like the look. I am a sucker for the Mark VI "beakie" style armour, after all, so I really wanted to get one of these chaps into my collection. While I have not yet had the opportunity to try out version 3.0 of the Age of Darkness rules, it does seem like the newer force-selection rules call for a larger number of officer/character type figures, so this guy will help where that is concerned. 

Some New Plastic MkII Marines From The VII Legion Astartes

"Careful with those rifles now!" Imperial Fist veterans sporting "disintegrator" weapons. 

Earlier this summer GW dropped a new edition of its Horus Heresy rules - the "Saturnine" edition. When GW rolls out a new edition for any of its mainline games, new figures are, of course, a big part of the marketing appeal to players. Horus Heresy 3.0 was no exception in this regard, with many fans of the setting zooming in on the new Saturnine Terminator armour (and the associated hilarious retcon). For my part, I was much more intrigued by the new multipart "regular" Space Marines sporting Mk II power armour. You get 40 of these guys in the new boxed set, so I thought I would start off with a 10-man squad as part of this summer's painting. This is a veteran tactical squad in the colours of the VII Legion Astartes, the Imperial Fists. 

Helmet with comb? Check. Big sword? Check. Scrolls and grenades? Well OF COURSE. 

The Horus Heresy setting is, of course, far in the (terrible) future. But at the same time, it's also "old", in that it occurs some 10,000 years prior to the 40k setting. One of the "oldest" bits of that "old" setting is the Mk II power armour, worn by the Legiones Astartes as they set off on The Emperor's so-called "Great Crusade" to sort out the Galaxy. All of us who enjoy the setting have our favorites when it comes to the different Space Marine armour variants, but those who opted for Mk II models tended to be going for a particular "old school" look for their force, and for years and years they have had to use Forge World resin (or that of, er, "competing suppliers") to do it. 

Vexillary on the left, regular veteran on the right. 

No longer. The Mk II is now available in multipart plastic glory, and I have to say, they sculptors really nailed it. There are few features I might quibble over...for example, the "belt buckle" style joint on the front now has a stupid skull in the place of the previous Imperial Eagle...but overall, these figures are excellent. The proportions are lovely (much better than the original resin ones, which sported oddly thin waists). The assembly is relatively straightforward, and becomes very familiar once you spot the assembly patterns used in the previous plastic Mk VI and Mk III sets. I also love the look of the bolt gun variant that comes with these guys...it is nice and chonky, with a cool sickle-style magazine and nice scope. 

Vox operator with the usual skull-enhanced communications system. 

You will note, however, that none of said bolt guns are to be found here. These fellows are instead equipped with various "disintegrator" weapons. Now, the Horus Heresy is already crowded with a blizzard of weapon selections, but the designers opted to retcon yet another set of weapons into that packed lineup. These "disintegrator" weapons are meant to be near-lost relics from the Dark Ages, very powerful but also dangerous to use, and thus only pulled out of their secure lockers in times of serious emergency - such as a betrayal by The Warmaster and half of the Space Marine Legions...

A view of the heavily segmented Mk II armour. 

The new rules reflect the power of these weapons (because of course), but they are also subject to a variant of the tiresome "gets hot" rule which makes them even more dangerous to those firing these weapons. It is, IMO, yet another case of the rules getting out of whack with the lore. These rare, dangerous weapons are such that they are only trusted to veterans...yet firing these weapons more than a few times is one sure way to ensure you never become a "veteran" in the first place! Makes sense in a 30k-kind of way, I guess :) 

Disintegrator "Blaster" on the left, "Heavy Disintegrator" on the right. All very, very safe to use, no doubt...

Since these weapons were dangerous and stupid to use, I thought they fit in perfectly with Rogal Dorn's lot! There are four types of "disintegrator" weapon in the group - the Sergeant has the "pistol", and most of the lads have the "rifles". There is also a "blaster" variant - I think that is the one with the twin barrels, while one chap is hulking along with a "heavy disintegrator". As one does. 

Don't roll a "1" lads...

"If anyone survives, I shall smack them with my sword!"

I was very slow to paint these fellows because...well, it was a slow summer for actually get stuff painted, and I wasn't in a huge hurry, as I sort of already have quite a few Space Marines, and while these Mk I kits are lovely, in general, the Mk II is not my favorite flavor of power armour. These were lovely to paint up - the only really challenging part was getting the decals to sit properly on the shoulder pauldrons. This a minor thing, but it vexes me constantly that GW always makes the Legion symbol decals a touch too large, such that you need a fair bit of decal softener to get these things to sit down on the curved surface of the shoulder.