Tag Archives: Conversion

Counter Culture

27 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by in Blood Bowl, Side projects

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Greetings Terrans, just a quickie from me today – I managed to get a quick game of Blood Bowl in last week, and so I bashed out a few counters to use instead of the standard ones. They weren’t quite finished for the game, but I’ve tidied them up this weekend & thought I would share.

For those not in the know, Blood Bowl games primarily track three things – Turn, Re-rolls and Score. Many coaches create their own snazzy counters to match their team, so I came up with these:

 

Simple things, but they are fun & are a sign of ‘doing it right’ in BB circles 😊

As for the game itself – turns out Wood Elves are bloody good… even when coached by a noob like me! I wanted to try as many positional players as I could, so I took 2 War Dancers and a Treeman, but I only had 1 re-roll for the team… A risky strategy, but the Corpse-Wood Wails comfortably ran out 2 – 0 winners against well coached a Human team. Come on the Wails!!!

‘Emotional’ Support

12 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by in OldHammer, Spacewolves, Wolf Time

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Greetings Terrans, how goes it? More progress to share today – the two Support Squads are finished. I’d love to say that these guys offer a gentle emotional support to the troops, helping them to process the complex feelings that arise from a life dedicated to combat, but Space Marines just aren’t down with that… They are pumped full of ‘roids and angst, and their armour is powered by testosterone, cortisone, and quite possibly Toblerone. Their 80s toxic masculinity is so profound that the very concept of any ‘emotion’ other than rage would be ridiculous… No, these guys only value the ‘blow shit up real gud’ type of support…

So now we’ve cleared that up, lets talk about the squads – each of which packs a pair of laser cannons, a heavy bolter and a missile launcher, as well as a Sergeant to point them in the right direction. Unusually, I’m going to talk about these minis by type rather than squad by squad – they are quite eclectic, so I think it’ll make more sense this way.

First up, let’s look at the C100 Marines. I had a job lot of these, including two missile launchers, a heavy laser and some ‘guards’. The missile launchers were obvious, as was the heavy laser guy, but I was stuck with what to use the guards for. I had a moment of inspiration, and converted three of the guards to look like they also had heavy lasers – the guy aiming to his right is the original weapon, and the other three are the conversions:

The C100s are actually quite interesting – they are the very first non-limited release Marines, (75p each folks), designed by Bob Naismith and released in 86… That means these minis actually pre-date the Rogue Trader game itself! Stylistically, they have so many elements that are recognisable even today – the beaky helmet, the backpacks and the iconic shoulder pads, (including the studs on the left pad), but there is also a lot of other stuff going on here. I didn’t convert the missile launchers at all, and you can see the ornate greaves, bracers, knee & elbow armour, and the very different interpretation of the weapons. Also, there is no getting away from the fact that these guys are really small and skinny – they look more like teenage knights in fitted plate armour rather than hulking power armoured post-human shock troops… This general skinniness prompted me to oversculpt the legs on the heavy laser guys in an attempt to help them fit in a little better :-/

 

Next we have a pair of heavy bolters courtesy of the RT01 Marines from 87 – just one year later, yet immediately we can see a bulkier look to the Marines themselves, separate backpacks, and the style of weapon start to look a bit more recognisable. I’m really unhappy at including these guys to be honest – I chose them because they avoided the shoulder firing approach we see in later heavy weapon Marines, but they are noticeably bigger than their squad-mates. I would much rather have stuck with the C100s or (even better) the LE2 Marine to represent the heavy bolters, just to keep a consistent scale within the squads – I’ll get around to fixing it one day, but they’ll do for now. The only conversion work needed for these two is the addition of a sculpted bolt pistol:

 

Finally we have the Sergeants – so far the squads are looking practically identical, but I wanted to mix it up a bit with the unit leaders. I opted for a pair of Marines in armour variants from (I think) 91. One squad gets a Marine in Mk I ‘Thunder’ Armour, (and his fab-u-lous helmet plume!), and another in Mk III ‘Iron’ Armour. Both are unconverted apart from the addition of a sculpted bolt pistol:

 

And here are they all are together, arranged by squad:

 

The paint job follows my approach to all the other Marines so far – this time I used Blue on the backpacks to denote ‘Support’, and this is offset with white for one squad and red for the other. I should probably note that of all the squads so far, these guys were the most frustrating to paint – mainly because the C100s are so goofy, but also the Mk III Sergeant was a sod. He doesn’t look too bad from the front, but the back of the mini is a really soft sculpt & not much fun to paint at all. I did cheer myself up by putting in a bit of detail on his left shoulder, (the DXIX refers to the 519th crusade mentioned in the Wolf Time campaign btw), and the Mk I Sergeant was a nice mini, but the otherwise-tedious painting and the scale difference makes these two squads my least favourite part of the army so far. I’m just very happy that I have the characters to look forward to – there are some cracking minis to get my teeth into!

 

Oh, I nearly forgot – I did finish another thing – the shrouded movement counters for the third game of the campaign! Basically, the Marines get to advance through a thick fog, and so are ‘hidden’ until they get within a certain range or they open fire. I don’t know how the Marines will allocate their resources on the day, so I needed a counter for each mini plus a load of decoys, (the Marine player gets 25% more counters than he has actual troops). I got a load of 25mm MDF bases, sprayed them up quick, and just splashed some paint around on one side & wrote a troop description on the other. Not terribly exciting I know, but a necessary part of the campaign prep:

 

Finally, I had a lovely card from a friend who has been reading up on my little project – despite not knowing anything about the hobby, she went and researched Spacewolves, and then copied this design for me and put it on a card:

How cool is that eh? I’m chuffed to bits! Diolch yn fawr butty bach 😊

Anyhow, that’s all for this post – I’ll be working through the characters over then next 2 weeks & will keep you all updated along the way.

Makin’ Xit Great Again

14 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by in OldHammer, Scuplting, Wolf Time

≈ 30 Comments

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Greetings Terrans – exciting news today! After 8 months, I have completed Rulko and Kulo to finally finish all the Orks for Wolf Time! First up, let’s take a look at Rulko, Captain of the Guard. From the Book of the Astronomican:

“Rulko is the new captain of the guard following the execution of the traitor Gort. Rulko is a nasty ‘stab-in-the-back’sort of Ork. He prefers to advance his cause by underhand dealing rather than by actual fighting. He is armed and equipped as follows:

Powered armour. Flamer. Bolt pistol. Chainsword.”

And here he is:

I used another classic ‘Ork-in-Power-Armour’ as the base model for Rulko, but removed the power glove & replaced it with a metal Painboy arm (donated from Doc Spleenripper!). I over-sculpted the arm to match it to the rest of his power Armour, and did the same with the Doc’s saw to make it into a Chainsword. Finally, I sculpted on a wee Bolt pistol, and converted his main gun to be a Flamer (including fuel tank on the back). It’s all quite subtle work, and I think Rulko really does look like a ‘proper’ figure from that period. He doesn’t really look sneaky as per his character description, but really, how sneaky can an Ork in Power armour actually look? I painted him up predominantly red, and with less weathering & rust compared to the other PA Orks – I figured as Captain, his kit would be better maintained than the other guards.

 

Now for the big guy – Governor Kulo himself! From the Book of the Astronomican:

“Kulo is in charge of the whole base, the whole island, the whole damn world. He is a merciless, murdering maniac, and thus well cut out to run the planet. Kulo has become justifiably paranoid following several unsuccessful assassination attempts, and now prefers to rule Xit from the deepest and most secure level of Castle Kulo. He is enormously fat, and wears two suspensors just to enable him to walk normally. His maximum move is 4”, which is never increased (to charge etc.). Kulo is armed and eqiped as follows:

Conversion field armour. Stasis field armour. Two suspensors to offset personal weight problem. Two bolt pistols. Power-glove. Neuro-disruptor.”

Hmmm… Fat, megalomaniac, paranoid, political survivor extraordinaire, names buildings after himself, bit of a cunt… I don’t know why, but Kulo just reminded me of someone. Here’s how he turned out:

As you can probably guess, the current POTUS was the inspiration for this mini, and the opportunity to poke fun at the big man was too good to miss. Old RT used to be full of political commentary, (Ghazghkull Thraka famously being a mangling of Margret Thatcher for example), so really this is a nod back to those times. I hope none of my American followers are too offended – it’s just a bit of fun.

Appropriately for the head honcho, this was a very involved and complicated conversion… I started with an old Judge Dread Fatty, and added the shoulders & head from the Evil Sunz Nob from the ‘Ere we go range of Orks. His left arm comes from the mini I used for Rulko, and he has twin Bolt pistols mounted on the power glove (otherwise, how would he ever be able to use them!?). The right arm was donated from a damaged LE1 Space Orc that I picked up on the cheap – note the delightfully small hand ;-) I also changed the gun out for a new Neuro-disruptor from the Harlequin mini. Next, I added a backpack from an ‘Ere we go Mega Armoured Nob, and started adding cables and other gubbins to the mini. I wanted the backpack to look like some sort of primitive life support system for Kulo, as well as the generator for his Powerglove. Finally I sculpted on a few details – more suitably sized feet, collar & (power) tie, baseball hat, pouches, a holster & doodabs.

Paint-wise, the armoured bits were a mix of grey and black, rust and gunk. I went with the classic power-dressing blue trousers, white shirt & red tie, and the ‘Make Xit Great Again’ hat finishes the look. The Neuro-disruptor was a faff to do – I’ve never painted a crystalline gun before, so it was a bit of an experiment… I hope it works!

Here’s Kulo with his Captain, just to show the size difference between the two. Kulo is obviously a hefty lad, but I don’t think he’s so big that he looks out of scale:

Finally, here’s a group shot of all the characters from the final scenario:

 

And that completes all the Orks for Wolf Time! Want to see what a full set of Wolf Time Orks looks like? Of course you do :-)

 

Now it’s time to start the Marines, so I’ll be in another building & prep phase for a while & I won’t be posting for at least a week. Next time I do post, it’ll be all about the Space Wolves. Haarooo!!!

Navigator Fogg & ‘Kulo’s Cook’

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in OldHammer, Scuplting, Wolf Time

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Greetings Terrans, I have another Wolf Time update for you this morning – I’ve finished Navigator Fogg, and an un-named cook from one of the sub-plots… Let’s start with Fogg – from the Book of the Astronomican:

“Like most Orkish navigators, Fogg is a psychic. Orks navigate by a crude process of intuition and primitive divination. So long as they stick to relatively short warp-jumps this works well enough. However, there are occasional accidents, like the one which has stranded the Charadonian fleet in the Wheel of Fire.

Fogg has a psychic mastery of 1 and a psi-level of 10. He is able to use the hammerhand, mental blow and steal mind abilities. Fogg has the following weapons and equipment:

Flak armour. Mesh armour. Bolt gun. 2 bolt pistols. 1 vortex grenade.

 

So, as a proto-Weirdboy, I had the perfect opportunity to include one of my all-time favourite minis from the Ork range – the Warphead Weirdboy from 1991. I added a suitable right arm & left upper arm, and then sculpted on sleeves, a brace of holstered pistols & the left forearm & hand clutching a bomb:

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I wish I had done a better job with the left hand – you can’t really see the vortex bomb from a natural viewing angle, but I promise you it’s there:

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In terms of painting, I wanted to make Fogg quite flamboyant, so went with bright yellow & purple as the main theme – I love his snazzy yellow boots! His hair got strongly emphasised, as did his crazy eye, complete with subtle glow effect. Other than the slight gripe with the too-subtle vortex grenade, I’m really happy with this guy, and I think he reads well as a crazy-assed psyker!

 

Now to explain ‘Kulo’s Cook’… There are a number of sub-plots in the final scenario of the Wolf Time campaign, and one of them refers to the cook, (no spoilers!). I wanted to have a few of the sub-plots in my back pocket for when I run the game, and while it isn’t necessary to have a mini to represent the cook, but I thought it would be fun. He doesn’t get named in the scenario, so I’ve christened him ‘Gore-den Ram’s-Eye’:

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Ram’s-Eye already had his cleaver, so I just needed to sculpt his chef’s apron & hat, and his right forearm & cooking pot (complete with squig gribble-stew). I didn’t give him a gun, (he’s more of a skulker than a fighter), but I’ll do a bunch of kitchen squigs for him to fight with in-game. I hope I get enough players to warrant using him!

Here’s one last pic of the two together:

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And that’s me for today! Just  ‘Captain of the Guard, Rulko’ and Kulo himself to finish :-)

Salute 2019, paint brushes & Doc ‘Bits’ Spleenripper!

08 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by in Mag Bellum, OldHammer, Scuplting, Wolf Time

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Greetings Terrans, how goes it? It has been a bonkers weekend for me, and this is a pretty eclectic post as a result. First up, I had the privilege of attending Salute this weekend – as a trader! I was helping out my pal Mark (Heresyofus) on his Mag Bellum stand, along with Ed (aka E.J. Henries of Malific Design). It was a real eye-opener being on the other side of the table, and was brutal on the voice, (I completely lost mine), but wow, what an experience! We didn’t sell much, but we got a whole lot of positive feedback on the Mag Bellum system, and on the prototypes for the next phase of the product. We also learned a hell of a lot about running a stand in the process, and we will certainly be better prepared next time! It was also great to spend some time with Mark and Ed – great company & we had a proper good laugh, (Ed faking an orgasm was a thing of absolute beauty). Here they are, looking tense (Ed?) prior to the punters coming in:

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The rest of the show mostly passed me by to be honest, but I did get to say hi to a few pals from the OldHammer scene, (Geoff, Paul, James, the Wargames Foundry team), and I got to say a quick hello to Annie from Bad Squiddo too. Dave ‘The Imperfect Modeller’ kindly stopped by to say hi – lovely bloke, great to meet him & put a face to a name! He had some of his minis with him too, so I had the bonus pleasure of seeing some of his work in RL – (the photos on his blog really don’t do him or his minis justice at all!)

I also had the chance to have a brief natter with John Blanche, (gasp!). I’ve met John before, but only very briefly, and I was a bit too star-struck to say much on that occasion! It was great to have more interaction with him this time, and I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing him at BOYL later this year. I also met & had a really good chat with GW designer Maxime Corbeil – wow, what a lovely guy! His enthusiasm for his work is just brilliant to see, and he’s such a cool dude to chat with.

On a personal level, the highlight was probably bumping in to Kev Adams. We had a good talk about sculpting, and I got to show him some pics of my attempts at Ork power armour –  I was quite nervous, but he was so kind and positive! He gave me loads of encouragement & some top tips on how to do a better job of edging and detail, so it was brilliant to meet him again & so decent of him to take the time to give feedback and advice. He really is a top bloke.

It was also my Birthday over the weekend, so my only purchase at Salute was a slightly indulgent paint brush set from Artis Opus – I used some B’day money I received from my folks, so thanks M&D!!:

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I had a quick spin with them last night, and they are bloody lovely to use… Not revolutionary, but they are certainly nicer in the hand & more accurate than the brushes I am used to. I also saw a demo of their new KickStarter Drybrush set, and I had to completely revise my view on what you can do with a drybrush… I saw a piece in hand that was so subtle that it almost looked like airbrushing. Seriously guys, go check Artis Opus ‘D’ series on KS – it’ll blow your socks off! Needless to say, I’ve now backed that project for an early Christmas pressie to myself ;-)

Speaking of painting, I did manage to finish one of the characters for the final scenario of Wolf Time in amongst all the chaos! Doc ‘Bits’ Spleenripper is the first out of the blocks – he’s basically a proto-painboy. From the Book of the Astronomican:

“Doc is fond of ‘experimental surgery’, as many of his patients have discovered. It was whilst cleaning his chainsword that he lost his right arm, and whilst many surgeons would have taken this badly, ‘Bits’ merely saw it as an opportunity for further experimentation. His arm is a marvel of Ork bio-engineering ‘know what’. It doesn’t work all that well but… by grumblat! …it’s impressive.

Doc’s arm is bionic and includes all the gadgets listed below. To represent the fact that this piece of technology is rather haphazard, roll 1D6 immediately before any phase of hand-to-hand combat:

1 – the arm goes wild, attacking any randomly selected model within 1” (including Doc Spleenripper himself)

2 – the arm simply fails to work for that combat phase

3-6 – the arm works normally

Doc Spleenripper is armed and equipped as follows:

Flak armour, Mesh armour, Bolt pistol

Plus

Bionic arm: Chainsword; Power-glove; 4 Jokaero digital lasers.”

So quite a specific and tricky modelling challenge! I started with an ‘Ere we Go era Painboy, (the one with the surgeons mirror to match the artwork from the book), and I looked around for a suitable bionic arm to graft on, but I really couldn’t find one that worked for me so I ended up having a go at sculpting one over a wire frame. I wanted it to look like it would work as a hand/power-glove, yet have a chainsword that could be extended out as required. I also tried to suggest some digi-lasers on the knuckles as well – not the easiest of things to represent! While I had the putty out, I just did the left arm as best I could, and sculpted on one of my ‘standard’ bolt pistols:

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Paint-wise, I kept to a blue theme for his scrubs – for reasons that will become apparent in the near-future. I also deliberately added less rust & gunk compared to the Ork Guards, but I did slap some ‘Blood for the Blood God’ around to really push the crazy surgeon vibe. Finally, I added a suitably ‘Painboy-esque’ glyph to the back plate – back plates & glyphs aren’t strictly a Rogue Trader thing & came a bit later, but I thought it a nice nod to the Doc being the first example of what has since become a standard part of Orky law.

I’m really happy with how the Doc came out – there are probably a few things I’d do differently if I were to do him again, but he certainly fits the brief admirably I think. I’ll be continuing to finish the remaining characters this week – they are all basecoated & shaded, so it’s a quick evening on each to highlight, add detail etc. You can expect a series of smaller posts as the week progresses, and hopefully the Orks will be finished by the weekend!

Onwards and upwards :-)

Armoured Orks pt.2 and the Field Commanders

01 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by in OldHammer, Wolf Time

≈ 28 Comments

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Greetings Terrans, I hope this finds you well! I have more Wolf Time goodness to share today, and it’s a fairly long post, so grab a coffee & strap in!

First up I have more PA ork guards to show you – very similar to my last post, these guys all have the armour, (and in some cases arms), sculpted over an original metal Ork. You’ll probably notice that there are only eight in this group – don’t worry, I haven’t gone mad… these guys are posted singly on the top floor of Kulo’s Castle rather than formed up in squads on the lower level:

So far so good, right? However, only having eight of these guys was bothering me… There will be life, (and games), after Wolf Time, and not having full five-Ork squads is just irritating, so I decided to tackle two more PA Orks at the same time & paint them with future squad membership in mind. Looking back over the campaign, games 1, 2 & 3 all have a named Ork leader, and all of them are in Power Armour. Long story short, I picked the two that best fit in with the PA ork guards and painted them accordingly. I reckon these guys were causing trouble at HQ, so Governor Kulo posted them to the remote stations to get them out of the way… (Governor Kulo is a paranoid Ork – insecure in his leadership and seeing plots everywhere… often with good reason!)

So first up we have Alug – he’s the Ork in charge of Station 1:

From the Book of the Astronomican: “Alug is a neurotic Ork with a mean streak as wide as a highway. He dislikes the technicians, or ‘boffins’ as he contemptuously calls them. When the attack begins, Alug is sulking in his hut. He is armed and equipped as follows:

Power armour. Heavy Bolter. Hand Flamer. 2 suspensors (to off-set weight of bolter)”

Alug is a pretty straight forward loadout – I used one of the classic PA Orks, and did some light conversion work on the weapons to make the Bolter look ‘heavy’, and to turn the weird pointy-finger gun into something that looks like it could be a flamer… It’s not just the Jokaero that can make digital weapons! A fuel tank was added around back to sell the finger-flamer idea further:

 

And here’s Alug with his bros from the Castle:

 

Next up we have Kalug – the boss for Station Three:

“Kalug was originally an engineer with the Ork fleet and still prides himself on his technical expertise. As the game begins, Commander Kalug is engaged in one of his favourite pastimes: taking “Sally” (his specially modified heavy plasma gun) apart and trying to put it back together again. Unfortunately, Kalug hasn’t quite worked out how to perform this complicated operation…

The weapon cannot be used until it has been reassembled. To reassemble the weapon successfully, Kalug must spend the whole turn in his hut. At the end of the turn, roll 1D6. If you score a 6, Kalug has managed to get Sally back together. Kalug can spend as many turns as you wish trying to reassemble his weapon, roll at the end of each turn to determine success. Kalug is armed and equipped as follows:

Power armour. Bolt gun. Bolt pistol. Chainsword.

Plus

Heavy plasma gun (‘Sally’). 4 suspensors to off-set weight. Targeter.”

So Kalug is a bit more complicated than Alug – not least because the Ork player can choose whether to keep trying for that 6 and play him with ‘Sally’, or can skip it & just get him into the fight without the big gun…

I started with another classic PA Ork and modelled him without the heavy plasma, just converting him to carry a chainsword & sculpting on a snazzy bolt pistol:

I then converted a Gretchin to carry ‘Sally’ – a fun little addition, that allows me the flexibility to play him with or without the big girl:

Interesting point – I recently had a conversation with Wudugast about plasma guns having drilled barrels or focusing lenses. This old gun certainly looked like it was intended to have a lens of some sort, so I painted it as such.

Anyhow, here’s Kalug with his castle-based cronies:

 

Having painted up Alug and Kalug, I couldn’t very well leave out the third field commander could I! So here he is – Zymot Thrallgash, the Commander of Station 2:

“Zymot is dead keen on “technoll’ji” and spends hours looking over the shoulders of the technicians. He likes to surround himself with all manner of gadgets, flashing lights and the latest in Ork know-what. When the attack begins, Zymot is in the generator room getting in the way of the technicians and asking helpful questions like “What happens if it blows up then?” Zymot arms and equipment are as follows:

Power armour. Conversion field. Plasma gun with targeter. Hand flamer. Power glove. Jump-pack.”

Zymot has quite a tricky loadout, and was probably the most involved conversion of the three field commanders. I again started with a classic PA Ork, and added a resin jump pack from Spellcrow (ironically, a Space Wolves item that they chucked in for free with another order). I changed his main gun for a plasma piece & cabled that to his eye (targeter), and also added to the detail sculpted on the back of the power glove to make it look more flamer-like:

 

Completing Alug, Zymot and Kalug is a cool milestone in the project, as I can now field all the Ork forces from games 1, 2 & 3! I’ve been looking forward to being able to say that for quite a while, so I thought I’d mark the occasion with some team photos:

Game 1 – Alug & co.

 

Game 2 – Zymot & co.

 

Game 3 – Kalug & co.

 

Phew, that’s it for this week, that just leaves me with the named characters from Kulo’s Castle to paint, and the Orks are done! I’ll hopefully make some good progress this week, and of course, it’s Salute on the weekend… Exciting times! Catch you all soon dudes, be excellent to each other :-)