Finished Veterans

Here is the group shot of my latest squad of veterans. There’s an extra three here in case I want to try some different weapons options. It’s been a few months since I posted the WIP for these vets. Actually, they’re made up of a few WIP posts. For the bases, I used the cobble stone pattern from my Holiday Basing Ideas post. When painting the bases, I used Ron, From the Warp, Saikowski’s Bloodthirster basing technique which I also used for my Skulltaker. The heads are from my review of the GW Heads Sprue. The plasma guns are my standard conversion. Finally, all the WIPs and techniques have come together and they’re ready for the table.

I'm not sure I'm happy with how the cobblestones worked out. The technique is really designed to simulate marble floors, but I thought it might work here. I'll have to search for methods for painting cobblestones, or come up with another way to do them. I don't plan to rebase these, but will likely try something else next batch.

The colorful backdrop is the tiles I use for painting. They're in need of a clean up, which is as simple as scraping the old paint off using a hard plastic scraper. I know I should use a wet palette, but when I tried a homemade version, I wasn't impressed. When I get to the point I'm using up too much paint, I'll change the name of my blog and try again.

Cheers!

This week's challenge

Only a couple figures to show this week. Up top is a priest with an eviscerator. Got this one in an ebay auction with a bunch of other bits. My son took him to battle last Saturday, within the first few days we had him, and he personally took out a Land Raider in four turns, don't ask me how. I do know he had a squad of IG there to absorb damage. My son came home and said he deserved to be painted right away, so he went to the top of the list. He had been primed rather badly, and in black which I'm not used to painting over. But, I scraped away the thicker stuff and painted him up. I'm right happy with the monk's robe look. I'll call my experiment in brown a success for now. I could never get the skin painted up right and it looks rather ghoulish now. This will cause me to rethink painting another bald guy for quite some time. It also taught me to always strip a primed second hand mini, as some detail is lost and there's some nasty cracks in some places.
The second piece was actually finished up right before the eviscerator priest. It is a conversion from and I-Kore Militia Leader, meant to be a Callidus Assassin. She's about 1/6th GW, as her right arm is actually an Eldar Pilot's arm, with a guardsman pistol hand. The Neural Shredder is a complete conversion, made from a jewel type bead, a bit of sprue, a Tau Firewarrior foot, and some GS to tie them all together. I wasn't sure about it before it was painted up, but I like the finished look. The pads on her upper sleeves are green stuff, meant to match her existing knee pads. I figured she looked roughly American Indian , so tried for that skin tone. Again, not too happy with the face, but the right hand gives me hope that some day I shall be able to do skin well. Now, if only I can remember how I did that...

Now it's back to painting the headless veterans waiting in the wings.

Regimental Advisers

One of the few recent pieces I actually consider finished are these Regimental Advisers. My son wanted to try them out in a game, so we got a set and I painted them up. I liked the looks of the Master of Ordnance and Officer of the Fleet, but I wasn't sure about the Astropath. In the end, that was simple and the one I enjoyed painting the most. After applying white primer, I washed the outside of the cloak a couple times with GW Asurmen Blue, and highlighted with a Vallejo sky blue. The inside of the hood and the sleave cuffs are Bleached Bone with a wash of Gryphonne Sepia. The Astropath has had a sealer applied; I'll seal the other two this weekend.

Painting the medals and outer accouterments on the two officers was an interesting challenge, especially the white gloves. Between those and the uniform, I don't think I've painted that much white on a single mini before. To make things easier, I painted Master of Ordnance's backpack separately, gluing it on right before taking these pictures.

Vets WIP

Over the last couple months, I've kind of haphazardly been putting things together. One thing I did was to take the "roads" I showed in my Holiday Basing Ideas Post and use them with another vet squad I'm putting together. You can see the WIP here. One odd thing about using these Christmas Village roads is they are very pliable, not rigid like plasticard. While I could cut them with scissors, filing them smooth with the base edge wasn't as easy as I expected.

The squad was put together using SM scout legs, cadian torsos, and a mix of scout, cadian and catachan arms. The flamer is intended to be a heavy flamer version, and connected the new flamer with the back back using red wire from what's inside interior telephone wire. You may also notice there are 10 heads missing here. Once these are painted up, I'll be using the heads I showed in my review of the Games Workshop Head Sprue.

Vendetta Conversion

Here's a WIP of my version of a popular conversion, a Vendetta. For the wing-mounted twin-linked lascannons I've strayed from what I see is the norm by using a razorback turret lascannon. This is an extremely easy conversion as, other than the cable, there is no significant cutting or trimming required. There's already a left and right side lascannon, they're made to fit together side-by-side, and both sides are flat and almost the perfect size for adding a lascannon power supply. Except for the magnet (and nail, explained later), all parts are shown here in the right picture. The finished lascannon in the upper left is how it looks with all parts in place.

For some reason, I was trying to reduce my magnet consumption when I came up with this conversion, so my attachment method may seem odd. However, it does show another way to get it done and, if done correctly, it's quite sturdy. I drilled magnet holes in the wing pylon coming in from the front and back. You can see here they are flat sides to the front and back. Once I glued the magnets in I drilled two other holes straight in and deep. The difference in my method is that I glued a nail in the lascannons, missiles and missile pods, and that guides it and helps hold it in place. You can see the finished result in the picture to the right. The nail pieces fit into the holes and are held in place mostly by magnetism, but also by friction. This not only keeps them in place, but also makes sure they are hanging straight.

I've done it with the other weapons as well, so they can be swapped out at will. There's more involved with this method, but it's a good solid hold and I'm more comfortable with the fit. I made two mistakes while figuring this method out that I would change for the next time. I should have gone with a longer nail, as that would have made for a more solid fit. And, I didn't measure the width between the two holes on each pylon. This leaves me with two sides that are not interchangeable; the left side only works on the left side, and the right only on the right.

The hull weapon conversion is pretty straight forward, using a magnet on a piece of plasticard in the hull nacel. I went ahead and purchased extra hull weapon bits, added to the order during another bitz buy. Minimal work this way, and I still can have a single lascannnon mount, as well as a twin link version. WIP effort pictured here as well. I have some thoughts for the other bits that came with the lascannon bit, but am not sure when I'll be getting around to working that idea. Hopefully that won't linger long.

I need to finish off the crew, and work out some bugs with the way my heavy bolters connect, then the Valkyrie will be ready for final painting. More to come on this, hopefully soon.

Armored Basilisk Conversion

My apologies for not posting in a while. After getting caught up from the holidays, I found I was getting frustrated with my paint pot procrastinating. As busy as I stay with building and converting, and even getting a start to the painting, I still run into a painters block and can't seem to get things finished. Rather than post unfinished stuff, I held off in hopes I'd finish and be able to post a complete project. So far, no good. I've decided to post my WIP here, in hope that you all will forgive my painters block for a while.

First up is my Armored Basilisk Conversion. You might remember my post a while back about double tracking the new Hellhound hull. I had noted I was working on something I'd show later. This is the something. In the top picture you can see I used a Shadowsword turret assembly as the basis for an armored Basilisk. The turret is too wide to fit the standard Chimera hull, so some modification was needed to make it work. The picture to the right is the WIP for the double tracking of the hull I discussed in a previous post. The old Chimera sides made it too wide, so I used the new Chimera sides. It actually works quite well.

The next challenge was to make the barrel assembly. I didn't want to just plop a Shadowsword top on a widened Chimera hull. Plus I was getting the big parts from bitz buys and wanted to limit my purchases. So I scratch-built the barrel using a writing pen tube, an Xacto blade protector, and barrel bits from an old style Demolisher. I found a large plastic bushing to transition from barrel to turret. A nail holds it in place, allowing the barrel to elevate. The turret doesn't rotate, which begs the question, “Is it still a turret?” My original barrel-to-hull transition was cumbersome, and would have complicated making the turret rotate, so I decided not to try. I wished I’d rethought when I change to the bushing, because I think making it rotatable, like modern self propelled artillery, wouldn’t have been that much more effort. If I can get the bitz cheap, I may try it.

As you can see, there's a fair amount of card stock involved. I've had plain plastic stock saved up for a while, but I didn't hesitate to use other stock of opportunity. In this picture, you can see a used gift card. The blue pieces are punch-outs from an electrical circuit box and are supposed to be vents. The clear pieces were once a twist off top to a drink bottle, and will be tail/backup lights and perhaps a place to add some markings. I broke one of the antennas off before I was even done with it, and both are now magnetized.


Two more pictures to show the front and other side. While the intent was to magnetized the hull weapon, instead of adding a magnet I glued a piece of metal under the hole. I figured the magnet would be strong enough, but now I miss the holding power of using two. For instance, I’m not sure where the HB I magnetized, missing in these latest pics, has gone. Yep, magnet on both sides from now on…

Basilisk: More WIP

Amongst the four models on my work bench now (not counting various infantry in the paint pot queue), is this standard Basilisk. I posted a WIP a few weeks ago. After two tone painting a few Leman Russ tanks, I've decided my standard paint scheme needed a small bit of light grey. The main two colors on my vehicles are a gray spray primer and a camo tan Krylon paint for plastics. Since this Basilisk was the first planned from the outset as three colors, I decided to start with a light grey base coat. I then taped the areas needing to remain light grey, and followed with a coat of dark grey. Another taping (over the original), and follow up with the final coat of camo tan.

While I like how it turned out, I found I tend toward applying heavy coats of spray. I guess I wanted to be sure I got a solid, even coat all around, but this can lead to some thick areas where the third coat is applied. Some of the tape lines needed smoothing as well. Frankly it probably isn't much different than I'd have achieved brushing it on, so I'm not concerned about this particular piece. I will however take a lighter touch on the next try.

I am also considering applying the light grey last. The light grey overlaps the other two colors, so that would require removing the previous tape and reapplying for the final coat. Something I had hoped to avoid by spraying light grey first, but I think applying it last would thin the paint over most of the model.

As you can tell from my earlier post about it, this Basilisk is the victim of my Paint Pot Procrastination because of another distraction on the workbench, a Valkyrie. I couldn't resist detailing the inside, and have probably put more time into it than I will the outside. A shame considering the outside will be seen much more than the inside, but I really enjoy the detail GW put into it and wanted to do it up nice. One thing I relearned here is the sticking power of primer over straight paint. To be sure of a strong bond where the hull pieces will attache, I removed the grey primer along the edges. It took a bit of scraping to get it all. Scraping regular paint from plastic means big chunks at a time. Paint over primer is much more stubborn. Really hit home the need to prime first.

Imperial Guard Heavy Bolter

Here's another Imperial Guard Heavy Weapon Team that's been waiting out my Paint Pot Procrastinating. An experiment in miniature diorama making that's been done for quite some time. One advantage to basing like this is the built in protection it provides. It's going to take a bit of effort to break the pieces off the base. It could become a problem though if I'm trying to put the piece inside a building or other tight spot. Hasn't been an issue yet.

Unfortunately, there is another form of "protection" that could raise concern on the playing field. I had built it for a fun look. It had slipped my mind when I started it that an opponent could protest about my piece having its own built in cover. This is something Dverning recently, and conveniently, brought up in his blog about Playing Fair with Conversions. Luckily, over half of the base is open on one side. If there is any concern, we can expose the side without cover toward the opposing force.

Double Tracking the new Hellhound Hull

So, I've decided to build an armored basilisk. In my typical eureka fashion, I thought up something I haven't seen done, and am somehow finding a way to make it work. I'll cover the basic idea in another post, once I get a bit farther along. I don't want to give it all up right away. Though I hadn't originally planned to widen the tracks, the bits I decided to use for the armored part require it. After a couple experiments, this is what I came up with.

To widen the tracks of the old Chimera/Hellhound kit, you simply glued road wheels side by side and glued the track to that. While that probably could still work, you'd have to find a new source of road wheels, as the new kit doesn't use them. The new Hellhound sides come with spacers that fit together, one side is a "male," the other is a "female." So, first off, you need to make them both "female" as shown in the top photo. You need to make the new holes the same size as the old ones, so keep that in mind.

Next, find eight nails with the same diameter, and cut them the length of two pieces of tank tread side by side. If you can't find a nail the right diameter, like me, you'll need to get one a little larger and file it down a bit. It needs to be a snug fit.

The third picture shows the width of the standard Hellhound side piece. The next picture is of the widened side piece, having the nails as spacers. The nails, tightly fitted in the spacer holes, give you the rigidity you need to remove any play in the finished side piece. If they end up moving around too much, you're going to start loosing tread pieces. We don't want that.

Next up is the treads themselves. It's not good enough to simply glue two pieces of tread together. One strong push on the joint and you'll break the glue join. Also, the edges of the tread has natural gaps, which would allow you to "see-through" them once finished. While there may be other ways to do this, I chose to use some old two-part epoxy I had laying around and connect them together as shown in the fifth picture.

The sixth picture shows a partially finished wide track side. If you look close, you can see the epoxy poking up through the tread. Please ignore the plasticard attachment, for now. You'll see what that's for in a later post.

One shame to note. There is absolutely no difference in the new tracks than the old. They are exactly the same, down to every hinge and tread pad. What you see here are actually old treads I had lying around. And, although they look a bit different, the sides have the same overall dimensions. The fact that the tread lines up perfectly once assembled shames me, as I could never get them to do that with the old road wheel system. Kudos to GW for improving this part of the kit.

Basilisk WIP

So, I purchased a Basilisk on eBay a while back. I had always had good luck with my eBay purchases. That was not the case here. It was pretty bad off. Most of the back end and some gun carriage parts were broken or missing, and there was glue in too many places. I now buy only un, or partly, finished stuff. The sides were still salvageable, as was the gun itself. Shortly after this purchase, I was lucky to get a couple more Basilisks still on the sprue for a steal. Unfortunately, they mostly sat waiting for their time to be built. I was inspired recently to build an armored Basilisk; now still very much WIP, to be covered soon. Many of the parts I won't be needing on the armored variant are exactly what I needed to flip the ruined piece. Here is the WIP.


This is pretty much the standard Basilisk. I don't like the tall shield, so cut that down a bit. It's got some old pewter pieces thrown in, and I've still got some little adjusting to do, but it's pretty much done. I did try a little something different with the back. I added some window screen to fill in the gap between floor and hand rail. Last thing the crew wants is a wayward round rolling off the back. Plus, it's a great place to hang their packs and other assorted gear. Note the backpack in the lower left will be hanging off one of the side hand rails after it's all painted.

One thing I've been concerned with for my own Basilisks was the ladder on the back end. It's a very breakable piece, just hanging out the back by two fragile pieces of plastic. Even a Forge World example shows this break point (see bottom picture here). So, I gave it a bit of thought and came up with an idea for a "hinge." I drilled a hole through one of the round bits you find on the back of every sprue, sliced pieces of the round, trimmed a flat end and glued it to where the ladder usually connects, where the rivets are. I trimmed, rounded and holed each top of the ladder, and connected it all together with the head of a pin. Now I can flip it over to a somewhat safer area for transit. I had hoped it would lay over flat, but I didn't get it trimmed right. I didn't want to adjust this one anymore, as that would just weaken the remaining plastic. I still think it's possible to get it to lay flat, and will give it another go when I finally get around to building my other standard Basilisk.

Mortar Squad

So, after sitting in various stages of completion, I finally cracked down and finished this mortar squad. One of my biggest distractions with 60mm bases is the urge to make a complex little scene out of them. I hope to grow out of this urge before too long. It takes far to long to get them on the table this way. I can remember commenting when reading Hal'jin's series, I Hate Right Hands, that the mortar holding right hand was another alternative. Out of this whole squad, the guy holding binos is the only one that does not use the mortar holding right hand from the heavy weapons sprue. While I didn't start these to show how this right hand could be used in other ways, here's some examples.

In the picture above, the one on the left has been just shy of being done for over a year. The problem with paint pot procrastinating on this team was a change in my army colors. Originally painted in standard Cadian 8th colors, I later decided I preferred grey armor over green, so I repainted the crew. The basing also didn't match my newer style, so I gave it a wash and a new drybrush, but is still a ways off. The brick wall is made from spackle (the all purpose basing material) with a bit of other basing experiments mixed in. The crew has some mods, the most notable being hand swaps for both, and a new leg job on the guy holding the binos. The left leg is from a kneeling figure, and is now propped up on the wall. One thing I don't like about the mortar holding hand is that it is designed for a kneeling figure, and doesn't allow for a two handed hold on the round. A quick hand swap here fixes that issue.

The next featured team is on the base I showed in my earlier article about using latex paint chips as basing material. It's since had a wash made from GW terracotta, and the figures added of course. This one is intended to show one of the crew re-aiming the mortar, and the other impatiently waiting to load the next round. The aiming mortarman's hand is the standard mortar holding hand, with the mortar drilled out. I did play with the idea of simply removing the adjusting wheel on the mortar itself and having the remaining mortar body serve as proxy. Either way works, though the proxy would have been easier. The right mortarman still holds the mortar, but with the hand swapped to a different arm. He, like the last crew, likes to keep two hands on the round.

This little mini-diorama has one mortarman continuing to annoy the enemy while the other prepares new rounds for the next volley. This crew took a little more effort in the form of scratch building the boxes. Heavy weapons sprues come with a spare mortar round, and I wanted to do something with the few I've collected. I'm not comfortable leaving mortar rounds lying about on the ground, so I built boxes to hold them. Actually, I cheated a bit; the bottom box is empty. I got lazy and used the standard mortar holding right arm on the standing guardsman. The kneeling one's right hand has the mortar drilled out, which makes an excellent lid holding hand. I hadn't really noticed before, but their left hands are the same also. I had built a little crow bar for the crew to use opening the boxes, but I seem to have misplaced it. Hoping I can find that before it's time to vacuum under my chair.

Playing with my camera for these shots, I discovered it has a "vivid" setting (right next to Sepia) in its "My Colors" menu. Although it tends to point out my painting faults, I'll continue to make use of that in the future.

Games Workshop Heads Sprue

So, GW comes out with some new bitz for Imperial Guard and I decided I needed some Aquilas for my Vanquisher Barrel Conversion. The ones that come with the Leman Russ kits are a tad long. I contacted my FLGS to get some ordered, and when I picked them up I took a look at the new heads sprue as well. Now, seeing these on the GW site is less than convincing. After all, the pic there silver on a white background; you can’t really tell what they’re about. Looking at them through the packaging isn’t much better. So, I took a chance and bought the only set my FLGS had. Thought I’d post them up here for others to view.

My first picture is of the basic sprue, here to provide a better close up for you than what GW offers. The second is the sprue based (white) with a wash of Ogryn Flesh. I painted them on the sprue to make it easier to show here, and perhaps save me a bit of time later. The third shot is painted, minus the finished optics and clear coat. The last two are front and back of the clear-coated, finished set.

Now, I’m not the best minis face painter out there, but I hope I did fair enough to give the curious a better idea as to the potential of these. My plan is to use them on a future veteran squad. Knowing I’d have to do a fair bit of handling after removing them from the sprue, I went ahead and clear coated. I was surprised to see the change it does to minis, like softening up the powdery look from drybrushing, and even lightening up the overall look. It also reminded me that one of my biggest concerns with clear-coating is that I’d have forgotten to paint an important detail, like teeth.

Now, the Aquilas? Well, they look good from the front, but are extremely thick for my tastes. I’m trying to figure out how to hold them down while I file them a bit thinner. Any ideas would be appreciated.

More free basing ...

Last March, Ron Saikowski published a basing article about using free basing material you can find just about anywhere. While I was always using ordinary sand, I now keep my eyes open for anything else that may work. Nothing I've found so far is very different from what Ron used in that article. Some of the best stuff I'd found so far was very rocky sand from a local river beach; great for rubble-strewn city terrain.

A few weeks ago, I was doing a little home improvement in the way of painting a ceiling. I had started late and left a thin layer of paint to dry overnight in the disposable roller tray. In the process of cleaning this up the next day, I noticed the paint had cracked and some had separated from the tray. Disposable trays are very thin plastic and the paint, being less flexible, didn't stick very well. I saw some potential in this, separated as much as I could, and broke it into manageable pieces for later use.

The beauty of this stuff is, you can leave it in big chunks for large terrain pieces, or break it up even further for basing your smaller pieces. Another bonus is that its latex paint. You don't really even need to prime it, and if you do, it won't melt like foam. A disadvantage is you can only make it so thick, so it won't readily work if you're looking for thick-walled rubble.

My first test was on a mortar team. I needed to break it up a bit into smaller pieces, but it breaks apart very easily into random shapes. I just grabbed the biggest piece and broke off small chunks till I ran out, then grabbed the next biggest piece until I had a decent pile. Gluing it to the base required applying it in layers, so involves a little more time than plain sand/gravel, but came out looking fairly decent. I added a topping of sand to the pile and remaining open area, then primed, and finished. In the top picture, you can see the final product, minus the team itself (currently WIP).

This has made me pick up a bad habit though. I painted a wall in that same room the other day, and purposely left some extra paint in the tray in order to have more "rubble" for the next project.

Vanquisher Barrel Conversion

A couple weeks ago, Col. Hessler asked if anyone knew a good way to extend the LR barrel. He's planning to build a Vanquisher. I had actually been playing with this idea for a bit, and finally got to the point I could share. While this particular project didn't involve a standard LR tube, I did have a FW Conqueror turret that needed a barrel extension. So that is what I'm using here. The LR tube is about the same diameter, so this should work with that as well. My limitation was it needed to be removable, so this barrel isn't permanently attached.

What I did was to find a hard plastic Bic style pen tube and took the ink and ball-point parts out. Next I held it to the end of the Conqueror tube and measured the length. I actually have a similar FW Vanquisher turret, so I used that length for reference. I then angled the end of the new barrel as seen in the top picture. After experimenting with various plastic parts, what I ended up using was a 1/4 inch copper coupling (50 cents at the local home improvement center). While the inner diameter is a tad large, the outer diamer is perfect. I found a soft plastic bushing to help fill in the gap, but Green Stuff would work fine here as well. I also had to fill in a bit to transition from coupler to barrel.

To build up the front of the barrel, I used some leftover metal tape I had from a home improvement project. This is very thin, very smooth stuff, which works good for this conversion. Thin strips of plastic card might work as well, but I was concerned with how well the glue would hold so went with the tape. I cut two lengths of different widths, using the wider width on the bottom. A bit of glue over where the tape ended to fill the gap, and there you have it.

Sentinels

Here's a recently completed trio of sentinels, with an armored sentinel on the left following two scout sentinels. The one in the middle has been done for a couple months. The other two I just finished up last week. The armored sentinel is the Steel Legion version, with extra armor on the legs. Extra points for anyone who can recognize the source of those. All three sport a very simple painting technique. First apply a coat of grey primer, mask with Play-Do, add a coat of tan camouflage paint (Krylon Fusion spray), add additional colors/highlights to suit, finish with P3 tank wash, and highlight where needed. All weapons are magnetized, but the armored variant's plasma and missile launchers are (currently) only useable on this particular model. What missile launcher, you ask?

Why, this one of course, shown here in a side by side with its plasma cannon self. The missile launcher is from the Dark Angels Ravenwing accessory sprue. The plasma cannon is the one from the Space Marines Devastator box. I had planned for these conversions before the new sentinel box came out, but only recently fount time to make it. The missile launcher was a fairly straight forward conversion, the most difficult parts being where to cut the missile pod arm and drilling for the magnets. The plasma cannon arm was a bit more challenging.

The basic bitz are from the SM Devastator set. The cabling just wasn't going to work for this conversion, as it was designed to curve around a SM torso. So they and the arm were removed. Finding the replacement cable was easy, as I had leftovers from a long completed electrical project. While the thinner red wire was good to go, making the blue into articulated cabling required more effort. I needed to cut roughly equal lengths in the wire's outer insulation without pushing the insulation off the end, and avoid cutting the inner copper wire. Easy enough to do, but a bit time consuming. The nice thing about doing it this way was, once spaced, friction pretty much kept the insulation pieces in place, even after some rough handling.

Cutting to length was the next challenge. I attached the magnets first, in order to free up my hands for fitting the wire. Once I had the desired wire length, I drilled holes in the power pack and the cannon's front receptacle, stripped a short bit of insulation from the end of the wires, added a bit of glue, and inserted the wire center into the drilled holes, much like pinning. After the glue dried, I bent the wire until I was happy with how it looked. It's rigid enough to hold its shape when the plasma cannon is being attached or removed from the Sentinel. Just to be sure, I added some super glue to help with that. In hindsight, I would have spread the gap a bit wider to better show off the wire core.

Though using a plasma cannon from the new Sentinel kit would probably have been much easier, I'm happy with the results of this conversion. Always nice to know there’s different options.