Tag Archives: Conversion

Something old, something new…

26 Tuesday May 2020

Posted by in Daemon Ink, OldHammer, Side projects

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nothing borrowed, and fuck all blue!

Greetings Terrans, how goes it? I’ve got a bit of a mixed bag to share with you today – a bit of speed painted cannon-fodder, and a couple of intricate minis. First up, the speedy stuff.

I’ve mentioned the rpg/virtual tabletop/inq28/Frostgrave mashup thingy that I’m running with some of my hobby homies – well, a lot of the campaign ideas have been kicking around in my skull for a good few years. It is set on a world called Spero Secundus, and originally, it was going to be a sequence of linked tabletop battles with the outcome of one game influencing the next. Over the years I’ve collected some miniatures with this in mind, and playing through the campaign in virtual has given me the urge to dig them out and get some paint on them!

First up, we have some Rad Waste types – the backstory for these guys is that they are the survivors of Hive Terminus – the hive got nuked about a century ago, and so these guys are the ancestors of the survivors. They exist in the ruins of the hive, or in the surrounding wastes. The minis are Tallarn from GW, but I’ve removed any imperial iconography, and added face shrouds and goggles where practical… In my head they are a cross between Frank Herbert’s Fremen, and folks on Tatooine:

They were painted with mostly washes & contrast paints, and are deliberately drab and plain looking. I wanted them to be quick and easy to replicate, and I think I did a good job there, with the test model being completed in 32 minutes! I did add some bone & flame iconography here and there, with half an idea of having them as serfs to my Legion of the Danmed, but first and foremost, they are Rad Wasters from Spero Secundus.

 

Next up we have some guards for House Malocchio – the ruling house of Hive Sevelli, and governing family for the whole planet. I have already painted members of Hose Malocchio, and so the heraldic colours were already established – this made the design for the guard uniform pretty straight forward. I used GW Mordians for some proper officious pomposity:

Again, I wanted these to be quick and easy to paint, so all the main colours are blocked in with washes, and ‘regular’ paints are just used to tidy up at the end and add the odd quick highlight here and there. The Lt. model got a bit more attention with a spot of gold here and there.

 

So that’s it for the speedy stuff, now for the more intricate work. This next mini is my first ever Inquisitor – a character type that I have successfully avoided over the years! He has been created in response to a new invitational called ‘Daemon Ink’ that Mark @ Heresyofus is getting up and running. Set in a corrupted library world, the setting is dark, mysterious and very Inq28, so I wanted my warband to reflect that vibe to the best of my ability. Mark mentioned that Green is very much the thematic colour for Daemon Ink, so I plan to adopt it widely in my warband – starting with the leader:

He is based on the Deathwatch watch master figure from a few years ago. The character I have in mind is definitely on the radical end of the Inquisitorial spectrum (or ‘pragmatic’ as I prefer to call it), hence the Eldar weaponry. He also had a head swap for an AdMech helm – I really like the crusader vibe this gives him! I also jazzed up his backpack a bit, partly to bring in those candles to give him a more scholarly vibe, but also to change up the silhouette & take him away from the original figure.

Paint-wise, I used gold a lot on this guy – it seemed appropriate for someone of his rank and grandiosity. Most of the gold on the armour got a cool purple wash, but the odd detail & the eldar bits had a slightly warmer sepia wash to make them stand out a bit. The rest of the armour is a very deep green, (a pot of Black Templar contrast paint with a good splodge of Winsor & Newton green ink) – it looks almost black, but the edge highlights bring out the green again I think. The odd recessed area of the armour has been carefully picked out in pure black Indian ink from Winsor & Newton – this has a slight reflective quality which gives a lacquered effect that I really like (it isn’t robust enough for a raised area, but can survive in a recess).

The robe is painted with a different set of greens, so it is tonally different to the armour without moving away from the theme, and I repeated the same trick for the wreath decoration on the armour and the gems. I pushed the concept to the max for the crystalline blade – I’ve never painted one of these before, but I think I did ok, and it was that was a cool thing to research and practice. Finally, a splash of red and some neutral bone completes the palette.

I’m not ready to share the fluff for this guy, but rest assured, he will be suitably well storied 😊

 

Next we have this rather exotic member of his warband:

She is a conversion I did a few years ago, but never had the courage to paint – she’s a really complicated figure, and is intimidating as hell! She is based on the Mistweaver Saih from Warhammer Quest, but spliced with the Harlequin Shadowseer mini… yeah… two really detailed and tricky minis 😊

In terms of painting, I kept with the green and gold theme, but looked at the colour wheel to do some more fun stuff. I ended up with a Green/pink & yellow/purple thing going on, which works nicely I think – it’s tight, but allows for splashes of colour across the mini. I brought in a few more colour combos on the masks, but these are small enough to not confuse the overall scheme. I am particularly pleased with the smoke effect, given that it’s the first time I’ve tried to paint it.

the mirror mask was a bit of an experiment as well… I was trying for a ‘ghost in the shell’ type effect with multiple layers of tinted gloss… The skull is quite hard to make out, and I wish I had smoothed out the whole face of the helm rather than leave those metal spikes in place, but hey ho, it’s not too bad, and I like a mini that rewards a closer look 😊

Here’s the two of them together – colours close enough to belong, but without being too uniform I hope…

 

In other news, there’s a new version of some Games Workshop game or other – personally, I’m finding it hard to find any fucks to give about it, but some of the minis look nice… I’ll leave it to better bloggers than me to comment in detail, but so far I’m not planning on getting involved… (that said, I am a sucker for a collector’s edition…)

Otherwise, that’s it from me for this week! I’ll be doing more Spero Secundus mooks over the week & weekend, maybe a Space Marine or some more Inquisitorial henchmen… we’ll see how it goes, but I’ll be back in a week or so. Stay safe 😊

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 :-)