Holiday Reinforcements - More Mechanicus Madness!

It's been rather cold and snowy here recently and I needed to take a breather from painting, so I thought I'd take a spin at building or converting something. To that end I decided to see if I could whip up something suitable for the Myrmidon Assault Engine described in the Ad Mech codex I'm using. I cracked open the Robogear box I received earlier last week and pondered the contents:

The model is in a slightly larger scale than 40k, it appears the pilot would be about half-again as tall as a guardsman. However, my hopes that it would be similar in size to a Defiler were not to be realized. No matter, the Myrmidon is described as being slightly smaller, more on par with a Penitent Engine or War Walker. The basic Myrmidon is armed with a twin-linked Autocannon and a pair of Dreadnought Powerclaws. As an option, it may replace one of the Powerclaws with either a Conversion Beamer, a Graviton Cannon or a Shockwave Cannon.

I rooted around in the bits boxes for inspiration, and came up with an old set of Starship Troopers "Grizzly" armor which I used for the torso. I like the helmet's look, as it's vaguely Roman with the T-shaped visor. A friend suggested that the legs left uncovered seemed a bit too spindly and "un-Imperial", so I whipped up some armor plates to bulk them out a little. It also hearkens back to the Defiler style plating. I decided to add a weapon from the Robogear sprue to act as a representation of one of the various upgrades.

I utilized some leftover bits from a Sentinel for the engine, and fitted it with an underslung twin-linked Autocannon taken from the innumerable Guard heavy weapons sprues I have lying around. The Powerclaw is fashioned from a Mortar, one of the lasrifles from a Chimera, an Autocannon ammo drum, and a couple blades from a Defiler leg. As I purchased two of the Robogear Spider models, I took care to use parts that are easy to find in my bits boxes, which will allow me to build another one of these almost exactly like it (though I may opt for a different weapon loadout).

It ended up being a fairly good-sized model, it's a bit taller than a marine dreadnought and significantly larger in diameter. I am somewhat stymied on what to do for a base however - The footprint is far too large for a 60mm base, but a CD at 120mm seems too large. I'm leaning towards leaving it un-based unless I can find an interesting 100mm resin base somewhere...

But wait! There's more!

I'd sold off a few superfluous models prior to Christmas and decided to use some of those funds to pick up another Knight Paladin made by a chap in Monaco, figuring it would be well after the holidays before it showed up. I was amazed at how quickly it arrived however (exactly a week from when I purchased it), and I was thrilled with the contents of the box. While I liked the sculpt of the first Paladin, and I'm well-pleased with it overall, I felt that this new one more closely captures the look and feel of the original Epic-scale models. After a session with the Dremel and a nice wash I set to building it.

I decided I wanted to do something a bit more structured and interesting with the base and rooted around in the Cities of Death bits to make a ruined step, with some miscellaneous piping and whatnot exposed beneath. I made some slime dribbling out of the large pipe using white glue and dripping superglue onto the top of it. The superglue reacts with the water in the white glue and it shrivels as it dries, forming a bubbly, ooze-like finish.

 

 On the back side I added some cabling and I'm planning on adding some purity seals here and there. Once it's primed and painted I'm going to add a kill banner to the Battlecannon. Not that it's going to be warm enough to primer anything anytime soon, so these will likely sit on a shelf for weeks until we get a day over 40F...

 

Lastly a side-by-side shot of the two Knights. They're very nearly identically sized, though the arms are just different enough as to look awkward if I try to mix and match between the two models. I do have an alternate set of arms for the painted Knight that I need to finish up (a Multi-Melta and Power Axe) that I need to finish that allows me to kit it out as a Knight Errant. Once I get those done I'll likely auction off the old knight along with the spare arms and just keep the new one, as I think it fits the look of the army a bit better.

...That and I'd likely get dice thrown at me if I tried to field two Knights in one game!