Sometimes the hobby gets out of hand...

I'll readily admit that I tend to carom between projects rather haphazardly and occasionally this results in creations that generally are unusable or unbalanced on the standard 40k battlefield - such as the Pegasus, the Leviathan, and so forth.

Every so often however, I'll get a wild hair to do something that's even a little further afield.

My local gaming group still plays a fair amount of Necromunda, and (inspired by the surprisingly active and imaginative Nerf community) I decided to make a Stub Pistol based on a Nerf Maverick pistol. A bit of dremel work, a couple brass etched insignia from FW, and a lick of paint and it was just about perfect. The best part? It's still a fully functional Nerf pistol, which comes in handy for supressing boisterous players in our occasional game of Dark Heresy!

Around the same time I made the Stub Pistol, I found a guy who was selling wooden replica bolt pistols and such (ever so briefly before GW squashed it, of course). I'd managed to nab up a couple items though. At the moment, the two pistols are all that are what I consider 'complete'.

Though there's no real way to tell in the Bolt Pistol pictures, it's rather large - plausibly designed for the use of a 7' tall Space Marine. I still have work to do on the Bolter (it's merely primered at the moment), but the large IA book should give a sense of scale. Both of the Bolt weapons have working LED flashlights and red laser pointers built into the body, which I thought was a nice touch.

Being a Guard player at heart, I had to have a Lasrifle as well - this one I feel needs the most work - it's got all the right shapes, but the detail is far rougher than I'd like. One of these days I'll strip it down and add some finer detail in plasticard and so forth, but it's almost at the very bottom of the priority/intrest list for me at the moment.

I did discover quite quickly that painting items on this scale is totally different from what I'm used to doing, and after doing the two pistols I set them aside and decided I'd rather paint 'real' miniatures again. Nevertheless, they do give the hobby loft a nice bit of 40k atmosphere!

We got da best shootas dere is!

At last! As part of my recent frenzy to finish up all the half-painted models, I managed to complete the last Ork unit remaining on the shelves - the Flash Gits:


I decided to go with a more ostentatious paint scheme, lots of bright patches of color and plenty of gold – as though they’d looted bits of clothing along with all the teef and guns.

The leader is intended to be a proxy Kaptin Badrukk, and was built from the AoBR Warboss, an arm from an IG Ogryn and a fair bit of greenstuff.

The Flash Gits are made from AoBR Nobs with the occasional arm swap. Their Snazzguns are built from leftover Lootas weapons from the Burna Boys boxes, and parts from the Warbikers sprues.

I chopped up the Loota weapons into backpack-fed versions, to leave the models off-hands free for a choppa or slugga.

This last one is definitely my favorite of the models, let no one say he's not toting around enough Dakka!

All in all a fun little unit to build and paint, and I have to say it's a nice feeling to have all of the orks completed!

The best laid plans...

Well heck.

Due to lack of foresight on my part, I have a couple out of state trips coming up and less entertainment money than I'd like to take with me on said trips. That being the case I decided to set aside the Mordian 7th for a bit and turn my attentions to finishing off a couple small units so I can get them up on the auction block. Edit: A tremendous hailstorm has put the kibosh on the trip I had planned for this coming weekend. Very much a shame, but I won't shed a tear about not having to spend the money...

I'd intended to make up a Traitor Guard army when the first Siege of Vraks book came out, but I'd have to say that I've lost motivation to create the army as a whole since then and it's time to get the various units finished up and off my shelves. There's still a number of models lurking in boxes yet, but I have managed to finish off a few of the half-painted units.

First off, a unit of Blood Pact Traitor Guard. My intention was to do one squad of guardsmen for each of the four ruinous powers, and the Khornate guardsmen would be represented by the Blood Pact. The models are a mix of Catachan Jungle Fighter, Brettonian Man-At-Arms, and Chaos Marauder bits, and their grotesques are made from shaved-down goblin faces.

Secondly, the unit of Renegade Enforcers - these I'd painted up a while back, absolutely brilliant sculpts from FW, they just look malevolent!

Next up was a unit of Alpha Legion marines. My intention was that the guardsmen were led down the path to ruin by a small group of Alpha Legionnaires who had disguised themselves as Dark Angels. Once their sinister plans were revealed however, they cast off their disguises and took to the battlefield in their true battle colors.

The IA book's army list has a slightly different mix of weapons options for the unit than the current Chaos Codex, allowing the squad 3 special weapons and a heavy weapon. I decided to make up a spare heavy weapon marine to allow the unit to swap out the Lascannon for a Plasma Cannon should the situation call for it.

I wanted to model all the wargear on the Alpha Legionnaires, and as such I tried to model the basic troopers with a Bolter, Bolt Pistol and Chainsword. I modeled a couple troopers with their Bolters slung using some thin plasticard, all in all I thought it gave the models an interesting look.

On the HQ side, I included a Daemon Prince, mostly because I liked the model and wanted to paint one, rather than any particular love for the model on the tabletop (I found the Daemon Prince to be somewhat underpowered for the points cost).

The last model I have completed but will not be selling is one of two Rogue Psykers. I really like this model, it's one of the better sculpts to come out for the Traitor Guard, in my opinion. Though I don't plan on fielding the Traitor Guard, I'm keeping this model for use in our occasional game of Dark Heresy. Gotta have bad guys for the players to face off against, after all!

I still have a unit of Renegade Ogryns to finish, as well as a 10-man unit of Nurgle-themed Traitor Guard made from Cadian and Zombie bits and a 20-man unit of the FW Renegade Militia. Now that the trip has been canceled I can get back to the glorious 7th, so they'll likely languish on the shelves for a while longer...

Get your motor runnin'... Part 3

Work progresses on the guard, albeit slowly. Over the last few weekends I've managed to get in a couple games to test out the various tournament list ideas for GenCon, and I think I've got the final list more or less dialed in. The most recent incarnation includes a 7-man unit of Rough Riders, so I finally got around to finishing off the seven I'd gotten assembled so far.

Earlier this week the second batch of bikes arrived from Ramshackle games, so eventually I'll end up with two 10-man squads. There's a fair amount of painting left to do for the tournament list however, and I really need to buckle down and crank them out over the next couple weeks. GenCon will be here before I know it!

One is good, two is better, so why not use four?

Work proceeds on the Guard, albeit slowly - I've managed to paint all the heads, hands and eyes for the Tournament army, next up is to get the base colors for the fatigues and armor. In the meantime however my recent Forge World order showed up in the mail, and I took a little time to build the Thudd Gun:

It's definitely larger than the original Thudd Gun model, though I have to say I think the new sculpt is far superior to the old one. I ended up using an old CD for the base, and added the standard CoD bits that I tend to use for scenic decoration for the army.

Unfortunately FW doesn't make dedicated artillery crewmen for the Cadian range, but I was pleased to discover that the mortar rounds included on the Heavy Weapons Teams sprues appear to be the same rounds included in the ammo crate that comes with the Thudd Gun model, so I was able to come up with a loader model that looked fairly appropriate. I look forward to fielding this artillery piece in my upcoming games!

Couple more goodies arrived along with the Thudd Gun, including the Vendetta upgrade kit and a Vulture kit with the new Punisher Cannons. I will say that the Valkyrie kit has taken the crown from the Chimera in the "Kits I don't enjoy putting together" category. I'm realizing now how badly I managed to build my first Valkyrie and I'm not looking forward to building two more at this point. On the up side, I know what I did wrong with the first one and won't be repeating those mistakes!

Stay on target!

The original Mordian 7th army list included several units that aren't in the codex any more such as the Thudd Gun and the Rapier Laser Destroyer. Granted, the Thudd Gun has made a reappearance in the Siege of Vraks books and I have to admit that I LOVE the new, larger model. I have one on order from Forge World, but as the order also included some pre-order models, I don't expect it to arrive any time soon. In the meantime I managed to dig up an old Rapier model which I'd updated a little in order to add it to the army:

It's definitely a home-game unit, as there really isn't anything in the current codex for which I feel it would make a suitable proxy model. The Adeptus Mechanicus army list by the fine folks over at Tempus Fugitives include rules for it however, and those will be what I'll use for home games:

0-1 Rapier.............................95 points
Crew: 2 Guardsmen
Range: 48"
Strength: 10
AP: 1
Type: Heavy 1, Twin Linked

The Ad-mech Codex includes a Techpriest in the unit's points cost, but when I use it for the Mordian 7th it'll just have the two guardsmen crew. This will be a multi-army unit used in both the 7th and the Ad-Mech army I'm slowly putting together...

Why fight the inevitable?

I find that I tend to see-saw back and forth between the forces of good and evil when I build armies, and I'm currently in the depths of a 'good' binge. However, I ran across something on eBay that kicked the alignment needle over to 'evil' for a moment, and got me thinking about my venerable little Benevolent Cult of the Four-Armed Emperor (all the better to hold and vivisect, er, PROTect you with).

I've liked the Genestealer Cult army list ever since it was first presented back in the Rogue Trader days. My very first Mordian 7th regiment was inevitably insidiously infiltrated (say that five times fast), in fact 5 of the models pictured are from my original cult and had until about 8 months ago never been painted! I finally got around to dusting them off and painting them last year when I used them in a game of Dark Heresy - They've lurked in my miniatures cabinet since then, one of those little finished projects that I like too much to sell...

Back in the early 90's I'd built a crude coven limousine out of plasticard and model car parts. It was hideous, and also the source of much amusement. In a fit of artistic license (or complete lack of talent, more accurately) the front grill was so exaggerated that anyone sitting in the drivers seat could not have possibly seen where they were going - thankfully the model was eventually 'put out to pasture'. While posting my recent auctions I ran across a resincast model of the taxi from the 5th Element, and it looked like a perfect replacement for the coven limousine!

What's better than a limousine? One that has repulsorlift capability, of course! It arrived late last week and I was able to get it cleaned up and primered. There was a small glitch though...

It's still kind of hard to tell with no real reference, but when I opened the package I discovered the model is BIG...

...It has a footprint nearly equivalent to the Macharius. After all the years of scorn and abuse from my opponents about their last limo, the coven apparently ordered themselves the superheavy version! I think it really doesn't look TOO huge when you cluster a few models around it though:

All in all I think it'll work. I'm planning on calling it a proxy Rhino with the armor values explained away as accounting for the mass of this huge, (albeit civilian) vehicle. I'm going to use this as an incentive/reward to myself for finishing the guardsmen I need to paint for the tournament list. The faster I finish them, the sooner I'll get to paint the limo and get the cult back on the battlefield!