Summer Painting Cont'd - More 30k Iron Hands

Another squad of Medusan Immortals for the 10th Legion, the "Iron Hands".

My summer painting continues - at a pretty slow pace, since the summer weather has been nice, but I am still making a bit of progress at the portable painting station after the sun goes down.  Here is a second squad of Medusan Immortals, loyalist Space Marines from the 10th Legion, the "Iron Hands". They will complement a squad of similar troops I painted earlier in the month.

I painted the right shoulder pauldrons white on this squad, just so I could tell them apart from the first squad, and to make them a little easier to keep track of on the table.

The equipment on this squad is a little different from the first one - instead of the bolt gun, universal weapon of the Space Marines, these troops are carrying volkite chargers instead. It's an upgrade option available to this unit selection, and I do love the look of the volkite weapons on the table.  With these models in particular they add nicely to the bonkers OTT look of 30k that appeals so much to me.  Together with the embossed boarding shields, embossed shoulder plates, the wide assortment of bionic bits (legs, arms and heads) and the grenades and ammo spare clips tacked on everywhere, this squad looks ready to party, 30k-style!

Vox trooper visible in the rear of the photo...not an elligible upgrade, just there to look cool.

Another view of the vox trooper, and some comrades, all sporting deadly volkite chargers.

I dropped a couple of other small modifications among the group - the sergeant's helmet is actually a command helmet from the Mark IV armour plastic set, and he is sporting a plasma pistol from the 40k range - it has a crazy over-sized scope on it, I loved the look and I thought it helped make the sergeant look a little nuttier. There is also a comms trooper, wearing a helmet and vox-unit from the Mark III command set (I think).  He is just there to look cool, as I don't think the vox-caster upgrade is something this particular squad-type is allowed to take.

Squad sergeant - helmet from a plastic Mark IV set, plasma pistol from the current 40k plastics range.

From this angle, you can see his left leg has been replaced with a bionic limb. You can also get (a bit) of a glimpse of the crazily-embossed shoulder plate.

Last, but not least, there are two special weapons supporting this squad as well - more graviton guns! Ah, the graviton gun - a Rogue Trader-era classic!

The Graviton Gun 

Remember this cool thing from Rogue Trader???

The GW folks plotting out the 28mm version of the Horus Heresy did many things very well.  One of those was to go back to the "Rogue Trader era" and pull the odd bit here and there and put it back into action for 30k gaming.  The graviton gun is one of those classics!

Graviton guns to the front!

In those original rules, the graviton gun added mass to anything it hit.  Hit something enough times with the graviton gun, it would be stuck to the ground.  This was bad news for anything walking around the table, and fatal to anything hovering or flying. My Rogue Trader-era Imperial Guardsmen once killed a stupid Eldar Avatar in this fashion, pinging it several times with graviton guns, then wandering over to stab it at their leisure! Ah, the whackiness of Rogue Trader...

Keen to zap those who betrayed their oaths to the Emperor and the Great Crusade...

The rules for the graviton gun in the 30k setting are no longer so nutty.  The weapons are meant to be somewhat rare support-type weapons.  I thought the rare-tech nature of the weapon fit well with the Medusan Immortals.  Between these things and the volkite chargers, the followers of Horus will be in for a zap or two...

20 Medusan Immortals, perhaps "relaxing" at the lake for now, but rest assured they are plotting revenge against those who betrayed their comrades in the Isstvan system...

That's two squads of Immortals now to join my scattered collection of Loyalist "Shattered Legions" for 30k gaming.  Together with the very small base elements I painted during Curt's most recent Painting Challenge, the Iron Hands can be safely upgraded from "small pests" to "minor nuisance".  It will take something a little more serious to take this small collection to the next level, however, and make them into a real force for the gaming table.  Hopefully that will be something I can share later on. But in the meantime...

A view of the setting sun from my Kayak in Whitefish Bay.

Thanks for visiting the blog, and I hope everyone is having a great summer!