Attilan Rough Rider

Traditional rough rider units ride the Terran horse. That is fine and everything but what about sticking them on some traditional space lizards instead. To that end we have our Attilan who has swapped the horse out for something a little more scaly.

The riding lizard is from a Lizardman Saurus cavalry unit. I converted the neck so that I could drop the head down to get it in line with the tail level to give is a closer to the ground feel while I was adding pouches to disguise the original harness on the neck. I added some chains from the GW Flagellents unit as suitably strong reigns for this beast.

The colours are a variation on the standard colour scheme for my Cityfight Imperial Guard force – greys and browns, red, blue and yellow. I added some grenades and skulls and various bits to the base to decorate.

In order to really get the opportunity to get this guy onto the games table I will need to paint up his 4 other buddies to create the full squad of 5. They will be a useful addition to the Imperial Guard force providing me with some fast hard hitters for army sized games such as Xenos Rampant or 40k.

Hardened Veterans – The Concrete Jungle Fighters

The Concrete Jungle Fighters

Some reinforcements for the Imperial Forces, The Concrete Jungle Fighters are hardened veterans of the Imperial Guard. Each one is a survivor of countless skirmishes having honed their craft to a razors edge. They are a concentration of roided-up gung-ho superheroes who are equipped with serious firepower in the form of bolters, personal side arms, a grenade launcher and a heavy bolter. If they can’t rip it apart with their bare hands, they also carry grenades and close combat weapons for close encounters.

They have been created by combining the old RT Imperial Guard plastic head with slightly less old plastic Catachan and Cadian Guardsmen.

Catachan Jungle Fighters – plastic models

The Catachan plastics are action figure like unless you do a bit of work on the shoulder joins with green stuff before painting.

I only used one of the original heads for the Sargent, opting for classic plastic heads and a Space Wolf Blood Claw for one guy.

Some official Catchan uniform patterns from Games Workshop

Nearly every Catachan mini you will see painted, is painted some shade of green. Rather than do that, I quite liked the blue version so based these off the blue scheme tailored for urban combat, but rather than going with the red bandanas, I choose yellow.

They have been painted with a fairly quick approach and then enhanced with some decals. I have used contrast paint to glaze the skin tones onto the base, on the black, on the camo pants, on the leather bits. I could spend some more time on the details and effects it’s time to stop as I am happy with the look for the effort that went into painting them, they are ready for some gaming now and I have a lot more Imperial Guard that I want to get painted up to a similar standard.

Going forward I have some of the nice old metal Catachan models that will be perfect as support to accompany these glorious heroes on the future battlefields. Certainly specialists, snipers, heavy weapons support, more regulars etc. would not go amiss.

Rogue Trader Blood Axe Imperial Guard Standard Bearer

Now this is definitely one of those bucket list models from the Rogue Trader background which I don’t recall ever seeing anyone create – prime real estate for me to plant my banner in then!

Not even Blood Axes would “knowingly” ally themselves with the Imperials. Blood Axes are happy to hire human mercenary groups however, so in order to infiltrate Ork space and stir up trouble amongst the Orks, Imperial units often pose as mercenaries.

The standard bearer is an important person in the squad as they essentially carry the advertisement for the mercenary bands services. In this case it has been topped with the heads of particularly ornery orks – the orks wouldn’t take them for serious mercenaries if they just had human heads on there, although Space Marine helmets are of course acceptable, being human nobz in the ork way of thinking. Space Marine helmets are not appropriate for our undercover Imperials, and chaos marine helmets would probably mean that the whole Imperial company would be executed for heresy (since it’s not generally seen as worth mind scrubbing and re-educating guardsmen).

Blood Axe Imperial Guard Squad – From Rogue Trader: ‘Ere We Go P.196

The colour scheme is essentially mundane light brown and grey, but I have opted for some bright yellow and purple to emphasise the sci-fi nature of this model. The stripe on the trousers gives them more of a dress uniform feel – I want it to feel like they have cobbled this mercenary uniform out of spares from the company quartermaster.

To follow up on this guy, I plan to paint the rest of the squad so I have a good Freebooter option to support my Blood Axe Boyz.

Dark Angel Falling

I converted and painted this  for the #Naismithery challenge on the Oldhammer Facebook page.

Dark Angel Falling – Background image from Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader

He is of course a Dark Angel space marine based on the artwork from the Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader book on page 241. I am not sure who the artist is but it’s was always one of my favorite images from the book.

It’s amusing as he seems to have been stumbling backwards when the shot hits…but in this case as it gives the picture a sense of animation I think.

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Dark Angel conversion based on the RTB01 Imperial Space Marines Kit

He was a fun build which had sat unpainted for ages so the competition was a good excuse to paint him up. He will form part of my fledgling Dark Angels force.

Morkagorka and Strawberry

Morkagorka and Strawberry – converted for playing at BOYL in The Great Ash Wastes race 2019. Hope to see you there :)!

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Distinguished Space Ork Boyz

Working on some Blood Axe boyz recently I couldn’t resist using some of the classic Space Ork plastic heads.

These are literally some of the first models I bought at the beginning of the 1990’s when getting into all this jazz.

It’s great value, giving the budding modeler and painter 36 test subjects to paint to a PRO-PAINTED standard. It was great as you got lots of weapons and shoulder pads and equipment to personalize them.

And here they are in all their glory with the studio paint jobs, and they looked pretty damn cool to the eyes of 13 year old me!

So I took some of those old heads and the shoulder pads and so we have…..

They are part of a larger unit of 10 Blood Axe boyz, which will feature in the army I plan to play some new 40k with later in the year.

Hybork Warboss

Planning to play some 40k soon, and so am in the process of getting the orks into shape.  This fellow will act as Warboss for my Hybork heavy force.

Hybork Warboss

He has been on the project list since 2016, so great to get him finished ready to play some games with.

Conversion of the Black Reach Warboss.

Total Cult – Slanneshi Warband

Presenting my Slannesh cultists – at least the ones that I have finished anyway.

Cenobites direct the faithful servants of Slannesh

 

I wanted to do this for a looooong time, so it was great to finally get to them.  These are chaos sorcerers with some high tech weapons attached to they can have some fun in the far future.

They are super nice guys and naturally they are now wearing their last victims.

Fallen Guardsmen with Ex-Imperial Preacher – Kill! Maim! Burn!

Before you commit to the life of a cenobite, why not try out the lifestyle in the Cult Militant.  See if you have a vocation for sociopathic ultraviolence.

Daemons of Slannesh – Fiend, Daemonette and Greater Daemon

The Classic set of Citadel Slanneshi Daemons are perfect for small skirmish games.

I had to do some conversion work on the Greater Daemon, she is really a composite of a couple of greater daemons rather than a stock model.  I sculpted the rearmost leg from Green Stuff.

Rogue Psyker – Pyrokinetic

This rouge psyker invariably accompanies this warband.  He is a classic armless metal Bratt model from Confrontation.  I have used the Soldiers of the Empire set to add the arms.  The force rod is simply a halberd cut strategically and carefully filed to flat ends.

Stormstealer Mob

Following on from the last post I have completed another 4 Stormstealers to bring the unit up to 5 models.

Stormstealer Mob

They took a wee bit longer to paint than you might think due to the large surface area covered by the models, all those extra arms don’t help one bit either.  In hindsight I would paint the jump packs off the model and glue when both the ork and jump pack were painted fully.  It’s a bit like painting a unit of cavalry due to the different approach on the two main elements.

 

Some well used jump packs

I envisioned these guys screaming in like barrage of claws from a blue sky so I figured it apt to base the colour scheme loosely WWII Luftwaffe Stuka dive bombers.

 

Painting of Stuka dive bombers by Robert Taylor

I decided to go for lots of weathering on the more armoured and vehicular elements of the models with a fair bit of rusting on the weapons.  I don’t see Hyborks as being the most keen on weapon maintenance, more likely they would just fire out the magazine and then hit you with the empty gun I expect.

Flyborkz….

The boots on these guys are quite fun being designed for landing on panzee ‘Oomanz and the like.  They got a bit of stirland mud on them to give the impression of messy landings as they erratically jump their way across the battlefield.

…Flyborkz

So that’s one more unit down, this battleforce is starting to shape up now.  I want to get enough units done now to field a force for The Men Who Would be Kings.  I would like to get moving on adding a unit of Wildboyz to this lot along with some Nobz and a Wierdboss Psychic character to lead them.

Family Photo Feb 2017

 

 

Stormstealer

The latest addition to my growing force of Hyborks.  When I designed the Hybork bits this was one of the things I had in mind by way of applications.

The base kit is the Stormboyz from GW.  It is probably my favorite kit of all the plastic ork kits available and is full of interesting bits that fit with the daredevil nature of the Stormboy trope.  The jump packs are very customisable and allow for a lot of variation in the look.

All I needed to do was to attach my Hybork arms (with the hands chopped off and replaced with some fun GW weapons) and my favorite Hybork head to achieve this model.  The Stormboyz ship with 25mm round bases, but these are on the small side so I have mounted him on a 30mm, which is sufficient to keep him balanced for gaming.

 

The colour scheme was inspired by the famous Stuka WWII German aircraft.  I am working on another 4 of them to bring it up to a game ready unit of 5.

 

Thanks for looking, until next time…..suk da vapourz ov mi contrails stoopid oomanz!