Steel Legion Roughriders

I finally finished a 10-man unit of roughriders for the Steel Legion. I copied Dave Taylor and converted gas masks onto Bretonnian warhorses for the mounts. I think they came out pretty well. The riders are from Mad Robot Miniatures and they’re all armed with explosive hunting lances. Not sure how these will do against Dallas’ sisters, but they’re not a lot of points and should be pretty entertaining.

I also completed a second unit for The Doomed! The Reborn Covens are a group that have turned to genetic manipulation in order to survive. This faction is probably the most wide open to conversion. I kept it mine simple and used 40k orks and heads swapped with pig heads from Max Mini. They went on ok, but require some shaving of the neck joint to fit properly. Painted in flesh tone they look like humans that have spliced their DNA with animals to make a stronger, more robust warrior.

Thanks for visiting!

It's Griff Oberwald!

Griff Oberwald, superstar Blood-Bowler! 28mm plastic figure from GW.

Having tasted the manic fun that is Blood Bowl, it was time to make sure a star player was available for my team. And here he is - Griff Oberwald, one of the best to ever take to the pitch! This is a multi-part plastic figure from GW - a kind gift from a friend, so I am extra-pleased to have painted him up.

Check out that helmet!

Griff is, well, the best. What else is there to know? Who else brings a hawk festooned with championship medals to the pitch? I gave him number 19 to wear on my team, but used Roman numerals to help remind everyone how much better he is than the peasants around him, who must contend with normal script.

Lots of flash, of course, to fit in with his status as a star player, all in the colours of the Carroburg Crimson Commanders!

This model is, in many ways, GW at its absolute best, with excellent, crisp details on a beautiful sculpt. It may be plastic, but the details are all there to be painted. Long gone are the days when a single coat of primer on a GW plastic would cause detail to vanish...GW today continue to set the standard for these kinds of miniature designs.

Attaching the hawk to the model is not easy, but I do love it - the poor thing is actually forced to wear so many medals it sort of buries the animal's head...very Griff...

At the same time, this model also very much shows the gulf between the world of multi-part figures designed with computers, the sub-grad-student auto-chat-bot that spits out the assembly instructions, and the actual real world of hobbyists who have to put this thing together. This is a beautiful figure, but that connection between the hawk and Griff's left hand is mostly theoretical. The model also has his face as a separate piece from the two halves of the head...just insanity. Even worse, the instructions give zero guidance on how the hawk is to be attached - beyond just pointing at the arm - and try to tell you to glue the face to the body BEFORE assembling the helmet head around him...only a computer would come up with stupidity like that.

Ready for action on the Blood Bowl pitch!

Thankfully, issues were avoided, and the model came together nicely in the end. It was a treat to paint him up, and I look forward to getting him to the pitch some time! We all know that newly-painted figures are generally doomed to fail during their first game, but this is Griff Oberwald we are talking about, so I suspect dominance will be assured...  

More Sisters of Battle Rhinos and Doombellow the Warped!

OK so here's another update on the continuing Sisters project - knocked off two more Rhino chassis, that makes six in total for the army.

The vehicles are of course festooned with details from Troll under the Bridge/chaostemple.cz (purity seals, door fleurs-de-lys, and front hatch emblem) and Wargame Exclusive (book).

Painted in the usual 3rd-edition 40K style with edge highlighting and pretty mild weathering.

The storage box is metal, from my bits box. I have several more of these and no idea where they came from, but they look OK I think.

Rhino #6, same as above.

Hand-painted fleurs-de-lys for aerial recognition, just as on all my Sisters Rhinos.

And now for something completely different... Doombellow the Warped!

On a recent trip to Calgary I stopped in at the Sentry Box - a must-visit hobby store. The Sentry Box also has a big cabinet of old OOP Games Workshop and Citadel miniatures and gaming stuff that attracts me like a neo-dymium magnet :-)

And in that cabinet (or rather, in a bag hanging on the wall beside said cabinet) was this guy. He was reasonably well painted and obviously part of a large collection of Citadel miniatures from the 1980s that had been sold to or consigned with the shop. After I got him back to Winnipeg I tuned up the paintwork somewhat (flesh, horns, hooves, woodwork on the weapons, and the stone axe blade which was solid red for some reason???)

I also did a little research to see what model I actually had here, and was somewhat surprised to find... 

Huh! No axe in his right hand! Definitely the same model but either a variation or (more likely) a clever conversion by the original owner. The axe is metal as well and who knows where it came from, but the conversion was very well done.

 

I also rebased him of course, and you can see from the photo above how big a model this is, two pounds fifty back in 1987.

I really like this model and hope you do too - it's a real Oldhammer throwback isn't it!

Are You (Really) Ready for Some Blood Bowl???

So Conscript Greg was back for a visit a couple weeks ago and suggested we play a long-delayed game of Blood Bowl, pitting my Rat-thletic Club Skavenblight team against his Carroburg Crimson Commanders. As I've been wanting to play this game for over 10 years (!) I was really enthusiastic to get it on!

 

I'm not gonna go through a blow-by-blow account of the game (being new to the rules we managed to play only one half) but it was super-fun and I totally get how Greg's LFGS crowd is really into it. We used the old Astrogranite board which I painted years ago, and just one note - the squares fit my old-school 25mm round bases much better than the new-fangled 32mm bases that Greg's team sports.

The game itself was a hoot - Greg's hapless Ogre's stupidity was matched only by the viciousness of my own Rat Ogre, who managed to put at least two of his OWN TEAMMATES (!) in the infirmary. 

There was certainly a lot of the old ultra-violence. Neither the Skaven nor the Imperials had much other than a ground game :-)

Both teams came close to scoring (the Commanders with a long run down the sideline just barely stopped by a Skaven Lineman playing safety, and a Blitzer; the Skaven with a run down the opposite sideline that came to grief with the Blitzer failing his "push it" roll and fumbling the ball on our last possession) but the half ended scoreless.

The game was great fun (I think even Dave V. and Mike F. had fun watching the mayhem) and I'm sure we'll get at Blood Bowl again, I even went out and bought the current rulebook which is a really nice hardback. I also have two metal teams to paint so there is some hobbying to do yet!

30k Imperial Fist Sicaran Venator

Time to knock out some tanks! A Sicaran Venator from Forge World (because of course I would finally paint mine AFTER GW comes out with the plastic version...)

The parade of reinforcements for the loyalists of the VII Legion Astartes continues into the late summer, with this Sicaran Venator, a tank destroyer from GW's "Age of Darkness" setting, the Horus Heresy. This particular model is a resin model from Forge World, although GW now sells a multi-part plastic version of this vehicle.

Power systems for the big, scary, "Neutron Laser Projector" - watch out, bad guys!

Who doesn't like a "space Stug"? This vehicle is a variant of the of Sicaran battle tanks, part of the Space Marine Legion armouries in the Horus Heresy setting. In the years since the original Sicaran model was originally designed and released by Forge World many years ago, GW has released all manner of variants for the platform, but this particular one always stood out as, essentially, a "space Stug", a science fiction version of well-known turret-less tank destroyers of WW2. 

Familiar look to the engine and exhaust system of the vehicle - no doubt somewhat-carbon-neutral, in that this vehicle eliminates all sorts of carbon life forms in the course of its operation...

The main weapon here is a "Neutron Laser Projector", because, well, "neutrons" I guess? It is a big, scary laser/energy weapon that will slice through enemy armour, representing a major upgrade in the anti-tank defences for my Imperial Fist collection. The design of the main weapon definitely has a whacky, Dr. Evil-"frickin laser beam" sort of vibe, but I do like the look of the thing, it fits really well into the look of GW's Horus Heresy setting.

Space STUG!!!

Of course, in 30k, tanks never have just one weapon, and the Sicaran Venator is no exception, sporting lascannons mounted on the sponsons and a heavy bolter mounted in a small turret up on the top of the hull. 

Another view showing the elaborate and whacky main weapon system.

This model is yet another which has been sitting, primed and ready to go, in my "pending pile" for years. I hemmed and hawed over which Legion in my collection I would paint it for, but with the summer-long theme of reinforcements for the Imperial Fists, further spurred by reading a number of "Seige of Terra" novels, I decided it was time to get this tank painted and that the VII Legion collection would get it. 

Ready to roll in defence of the Imperial Palace! How foolish...

So here we are, ready with a sizeable force to mount a defence of Imperial Palace on Terra - a doomed defence, of course, but one that will hopefully be fun on the table! That is all for now - the 30k painting bench is mostly empty, and I'm now back to tinkering in other projects and building some new models for the next round. Thanks for reading, and I hope to be back soon with more!

The Doomed

Osprey released a new wargame several months ago called “The Doomed”. It’s a rules light skirmish game set in a suspiciously grim dark setting. The game depicts several factions struggling against giant monsters called “horrors”. The various factions have advanced technology, but are pretty medieval in appearance . The game encourages kitbashing the various factions and the faction descriptions are deliberately vague and open to interpretation. One of the factions is called the “Martyr Retinues”. They are basically tech priest in 40k and I decided to kitbash and paint a 5 “man” squad from various bits.

This guy is converted from a Heroclix Hulk model. I added a power fist from a 40k contemptor dreadnought as well as a backpack and bionic head. I imagine this guy is genetically engineered and then given bionic components to make him more suitable for battle against giant monsters. This has had an unhealthy effect on his flesh which appears to be approaching a state of decay.

This fellow is almost entirely bionic. He’s made from a mark III space marine chest, skitarii head and legs and arms from an adeptus titanicus knight.

These 2 grunts are made from a combination of genestealer cult and skitarri models from GW. The legs are from a copplestone robot and Victoria Miniatures.

The last member of the group is the leader. One of the weapons this faction can use is called a “thermal lance” I decided to literally interpret this as a lance. I used bits from my Bretonnians, skitarii and parts from an ork burner. Instead of a mount, he has bionic legs from a Mantic enforcer. The shield is from anvil industry.

I limited the number of colours used and relied heavily on washes to achieve a very grimy effect and to help unify them as members of a single faction.

This was a fun and goofy unit to build and the vague theme and descriptions really let you run wild. I plan to complete a few more squads over the winter, but now it’s back to the steel legion!

Thanks for visiting!

Sigismund Would Like A Word...

"Hi, my name is Sigismund, and I like swords..."

The most recent wave of reinforcements for my 30k loyalists comes to a close with Sigismund, First Captain of the VII Legion Astartes, the Imperial Fists. This is a resin model from Forge World's Horus Heresy character series, featuring sculpts of the Primarchs and a number of other named characters from GW's Horus Heresy setting. 

A view from the top showing some of the rubble from the base.

One thing these Forge World character series sculpts have in common is a determination to have the subject stand on a huge pile of terrain, so they tower over the other models which might be on the table. Sigismund here is no exception, standing atop the wreck of a Sicaran tank. You can detach his smaller 32mm base from the overall scenic base, but the pile of rubble is still there...I sort of regret not ignoring his terrain base all together, but then, given the expense on the model, it felt like an even bigger waste of money not to paint all of that terrain...so here we are...

That is quite a pile of rubble he is perched on...

I could do without the terrain pile, but full marks to the sculptors for the figure itself. The pose is very nice, very well done, very dramatic. The figure looks like he has someone in his sights, an enemy, one who is about to lose a limb or three...

A view showing some of the detail on the rear armour pack.

Sigismund is, shall we say, really a big fan of swords, and is also one of Rogal Dorn's top commanders, although he is out of favour with Dorn by the time the Siege of Terra gets underway. Sigismund nonetheless leads in loyalist fleet actions during the "Solar War", tries to hold back the Iron Warriors from taking the Lion's Gate space port, and participates in other essential actions of the defence of the Imperial Palace on Terra. Dorn seems pissed at him, but still relies on him to rally the defences at key moments.

Here we see the full scenic base, with the wrecked segment of a Sicaran tank.

As the siege of Terra grinds on, Sigismund finds himself trying to reconcile the discrepancies between the Emperor's "official" views on matters relating to warp craft, magic and superstition with his actual battlefield experiences and the clearly visible deamonic aspects of the traitor forces pressing the defences. This progression is marked in repeated encounters with Kharn of the World Eaters. Initially, Sigismund cannot match him, but as he finds himself on the path of faith in The Emperor - and even receives a new sword at The Emperor's behest - he blossoms into an all-out murderhobo, and together with the Templar Brethern of the VII Legion, he racks up an impressive total of kills while inspiring new levels of religious-style devotion among the defenders of the Imperial Palace on Terra. The table is duly set for the Templar chapters in the 40k universe...

Another view from the top, showing the broader rubble collection...

Painting this figure was fun, but again the uselessness of "Agrax Earthshade" was a real problem...it is simply not useful as a pin wash anymore...or as a wash for much of anything, when you get down to it. I'm working through the bottle I have mostly out of a sense of inertia, but the search is on for a replacement.

Ready to inspire the defender of Terra!

Sigismund will make for an entertaining character on the table - maybe less entertaining for the traitor players, though, but still will make for a fun scenario where a small group of Imperial Fists try and hold Horus' followers at bay.