Imperial Guard - Thargadd's Thumpers collaboration project, part II

It's been just crazy at work this past week, over 70 hours in the last 7 days. Oof. As a way to unwind after the loooong days I've been working on the new version of Thargadd's Thumpers that I'm painting up for Colonel Scipio of Palladian Guard fame! He recently posted some pictures of the build of the Palladian veterans that he's building and painting for me, and I am absolutely blown away with how cool they are looking. Check 'em out!

Obviously there's still quite a bit left to do, but the main colors have all been blocked in and the highlighting and shading has begun! I'm really enjoying working on these new Ogryns, they really have a ton of personality. I'm giving some serious thought to getting another set to replace the current unit Ogryns that I have had for ages, though it seems like a bit of a disservice to replace the 'original' Thargadd's Thumpers who have served so well over the years...

In any case, I'm hoping I can get these guys finished up over the upcoming weekend, as it's supposed to be warm enough to get them sealed. We're in the midst of a Colorado winter here which means alternating days of snow and bitter cold followed by sunshiny, warm days. It keeps us on our toes, that's for sure!

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!

Imperial Guard - Charybdis Assault Launchers (proxy Griffon/Hydra)

Pressing onward with the guard vehicles for the glorious 7th brings us to the Charybdis Assault Launchers, which I've used alternately as proxy Griffons or Hydras as the situation calls for. Made from the older Chimeras, some bits from the vehicle upgrade sprue and the launcher and top hatch from a space marine Whirlwind, they fit together surprisingly easily!

 

I continued on with the "mid-launch sequence" on one of the launchers, I like the dynamic look it gives the model, though it'll invariably come loose or snap off in due course...

 

On the rear section I added a hatch, and have plans to be able to run these as Salamander scout tanks with the enclosed crew compartment upgrade, though I'll need to build a set of autocannon or heavy flamer turrets to take the place of the launcher. Should be fairly easy to do, and make them even more multi-purpose!

Imperial Guard - Vendetta painted

Hope everyone on this side of the pond had a great Thanksgiving - The holiday was a whirlwind of food and travel for me, the few days of vacation were much appreciated however! Still slowly chipping away at the guard, so I thought I'd snap a few pics of the recently-completed Vendetta!

I did a few minor modifications to the build - reversing the wings and leaving out the rear tail section. I think it gives it a bit more of a predatory look!

 

I wanted to keep the paint scheme fairly simple - mostly black, with a few red panels here and there. I'm planning on using the crew models for another nefarious purpose at some point in the future, so the cockpits were just painted in.

 

The small bits of yellow spot color here and there pop nicely against the red and black, and help tie it in to the rest of the army.

I took a crack at doing a 'slate skies' color on the bottom, helps break up the outline a bit and give it something than just more black. Overall I'm pretty pleased with how it came out - time to take it out tank hunting!

Next up, the Charybdis Assault Launchers...

Road to Adepticon - Army Pics and List v3

It's been crazy at work of late so not a whole lot of hobby time - a little bit of fooling around with army lists, but only one model actually got painted:

Eye of Error over at Eye of Error made a couple banners for me, so I scaled one down to use as the Regimental banner. Fairly simple bit of work, I clipped the plastic banner and pole off and inserted a bit of brass rod cut to fit, and used one of the banner toppers that comes with the command squad sprues to cap it off. I'm rather pleased with how the banner itself turned out as well - definitely more suited to the army than the rather cadian-esque one that comes with the plastic kit.

I've done a bit of messing about with the army list I'm intending to take to Adepticon and ended up with a compromise between building the most efficient group of killers I could, and my desire to include a number of units that fit the fluff of the Mordian 7th Regiment. The 7th are known for their heavy use of abhumans, and while I haven't found a really good fit for my Beastmen (in friendly games I use them as Penitents that always use the Knife Fighters option but lose their lasguns), I did want to include Thargadd's Thumpers (ogryns) and Dunno's Deadeyes (ratling snipers). I also drew out the shape for the carrying tray just to see if I could actually FIT all the models, which just barely worked. That's a whole lotta infantry!

As far as it goes, there's not a lot that still needs to be painted for this version of the list - A Vendetta, the proxy Hydra and the Aegis Defense Line, all of which have at least a little paint on 'em so far. Hopefully with the upcoming holiday weekend I can actually get 'em finished off!

Imperial Guard - A whole mess of infantry painted!

With Adepticon bearing down on us, I really needed to get in gear and paint up the multiple squads of infantry that have been neglected for so long. Thirty of 'em were going to be needed for my planned 1850 list so there was no getting around the fact that I was in for some assembly line painting. Not my favorite way to paint, but it's efficient for those times when you just have a horde of troops to do.

On the up side, I'd already painted up the heavy weapons teams so there ended up being 24 of 'em on deck. I didn't document this stage too much, just snapped a quick picture about halfway through. The scheme is fairly quick and painless, so it only took about 5-6 hours to get them up to tabletop standard.

...Almost to the finish line! I still need to paint on the unit insignia and "winged 7" on the shoulder pads, but I wanted to get a first pass of sealant on them before I did so. I find that helps when it comes time to draw on tiny numbers and symbols - the sealant smooths out the surface somewhat so the paint flows really nicely onto the shoulder pads.

  

Couple closeups of the various squads - I don't tend to go overboard on detail for the troops - especially true in the case of the guard, as these guys get pulled off the table in double handfuls due to casualties anyway! The grenade launcher/missile launcher combo gives the squads the ability to deal with both hordes and light vehicles/elite infantry, alternately there's 3 lascannons that I can swap in for those times I know I'll be facing heavier mechanized opponents.

While I was about it, I brought the old unit of ratlings up to speed, touching up their fatigues, re-painting the weapon housings, and re-basing them. Luckily my old urban rubble theme is essentially the same physical form as my current method - just a re-paint from grey to brown, and the addition of some static grass is all that is required.

 

I'm in the queue to have the extraordinarily talented Ron over at FTW build me a new commander model for the army, but needed something for a stand in in the short term. Recently I've been using the rules for Ursakar Creed for my army commander Evin Eldro, which meant that the old model I was using wasn't armed appropriately and the real Creed model, while cool, just doesn't fit my vision. Twin hot-shot laspistols and a power sword? Turns out I have a model armed that way... Kal Jerico! A quick repaint of the coat and base and job's a good 'un. I'm hoping to have Ron do a similar model that includes a carapace breastplate and an officer's head - while the base Kal Jerico model is really dynamic, it needs some work to really make it blend in with a guard army. For now though, this'll do!

It felt really good to be able to swap the last of the big Troop units over to green on the painting chart. I also took a little time in Excel and got it to reference the point values of the army list and was surprised to find out exactly how many points of guard there actually are lurking in the Closet of Doom. I really can't think of much that I want to add to the army at this point - possibly another couple Leman Russ variants, maybe a Stormblade for grins, but unless GW comes out with a storm trooper kit that I can't live without, I can't think of any further infantry that I really need. Could it be that the project is finally reaching conclusion?

...Nah, probably not. Hah!

Road to Adepticon 2013 - test game, sort of...

Well over the past weekend I got together with my buddy Dave from Ex Fide Vivo with the intent to try out the guard army list I'd cobbled together for use at Adepticon next year. Unfortunately the weather was quite poor on Saturday and it started to snow and sleet fairly heavily, so we didn't get much past turn 2 before calling the game for weather. Nevertheless I did take a few pictures that I thought I'd share, as well as point you over to Dave's blog where he did a rather more in-depth write up of the game (as much of it as we got done, that is.

Setup - We ended up playing the Scouring with the diagonal setup. I liked the idea of the randomized objective values, though the placement that I chose for the ones on my side of the line came back to bite me...

 

Two of the three objectives on my side of the table ended up being "Sabotaged", and the forest in which the one on the left flank the located was also full of brainleaf fronds. Suffice it to say the squad in there fled for their lives! The potential for explosions drove my guard from cover in the middle of the table as well, which definitely hampered my plans.

 

I started to swing to the right flank to take that objective, and the rough riders showed up on that flank as well - I was feeling pretty confident... Until a full assault squad DS'ed right in the middle of 'em!

 

The vindicator had been stunned such that it couldn't fire its gun, so it attempted a tank shock into the Rough Riders. They danced out of the way rather deftly, only to be annihilated by the Baal Predator immediately thereafter.

I was unable to materially weaken the rampaging assault squads, who butchered their way through my line, and managed to surround and cut down the company command squad. At this point we ended up calling the game due to snow, but in all honesty it was pretty much all over but the shouting at this point anyway.

We spent some time discussing tactics and listbuilding and I've come up with a tweaked version of the list that cuts out some of the Chimeras, adds a defense line and quad-gun, and so forth. We're hoping to have a re-match soon!