Imperial Guard - Thargadd's Thumpers redux/collaboration project

Greetings all! Just a quick post to kick off the first collaboration project that I've participated in. Colonel Scipio of the rather excellent Palladian Guard blog recently posted about doing collaborative projects with other bloggers, and it definitely captured my interest. The idea is to do a miniature exchange project wherein we would each paint a unit in our personal army's colors and second them to the other person's army. We emailed back and forth a bit to discuss some ideas and we settled on Colonel Scipio painting a unit of Palladian Veterans that had been left behind/seconded to the Mordian 7th following a combined action, and me painting up a unit of Thargadd's Thumpers, the mercenary Ogryn unit that is a mainstay of the glorious 7th - not to mention that it would be amusing for the models coming from the Yank to be a unit of loud, obnoxious, violent cretins! :)

Since we're on opposite sides of the pond, we decided it would make the most sense if we sourced the models locally. I've wanted to paint up a unit of the new Ogryns for a long time, so this was a perfect opportunity for me! Sadly part of the plan was to incorporate the Nork Deddog model into the unit, but to my surprise the new Ogryns are noticeably larger than the old ones, and the Nork model looked rather weedy in comparison.

I wanted to add a bit more character to the unit, seeing as they are a bunch of mercenaries I thought a few extra trophies, gear and weapons wouldn't go amiss. Sergeant Thargadd was given a back banner during his time with the Mordian 7th regiment, and I thought it would be amusing to have it be naught but a tattered rag after the period of hard campaigning.

We're supposed to be getting snow and cold weather for an extended period starting tomorrow, but as it's supposed to be relatively warm today I'm really hoping I can get these guys primered!