Progress slowed down again, but still...

In the beginning of January I had quite a good progress, but sadly things have slowed down again. Still, I have done a few things.
I have made a command squad for my Abhuman Auxilia, this is assembled from my bitz box, and because of this they don't have a coherrent look. But this was exactly what I was going for, as the fluff indicates that the human officers and veterans serving in the Abhuman Auxilia have been transfered to this unit because of mistakes the have done or because their commanding officers haven't liked them much. Being a human in the Abhuman Auxilia is considered a punishement, all though some people actually find it rewarding, like their commisar that have found out that abhumans are much more easy to send in to battle. No one needs to be shot for being cowards, and especially ogryns and bullgryns have such a high respect for commisars that they obey his orders without question even though it will cost them their lives.

I have legs both from Cadian and Catachan sprues, and the commander is probably from the Baneblade kit. The bodies are also from several different boxes, some look like tank commanders and some are Cadians.

I think it is only fitting that the abhuman auxilia have an abhuman as a standard bearer, so I have converted a Bullgryn with a spare arm from my Ogres bitz box.
The standard is also from the ogre-range, so it is quite crude, but so are ogryns so I am sure that is ok. The idea is that the standard is something the Commissar has made to boost moral further.
In case I need to make it in to an all human command squad for games, I have also made up a human counterpart with a standard from a box of Cadians or Catachans.
When I made my bullgryn standard bearer, I made the remaining two miniatures in the box in to bullgryns wearing gasmasks and being armed with battle mauls and suppression shields, so I now have a complete unit of five. They will now be painted up before I make the final assembly of the head and the shield arm to the rest of the torso.

I have also started to paint up the second crewman for the Hydra Flak tank, and he is comming along nicely.

The Chaos Space Marines have gotten all the shafts of their power weapons painted, the only thing missing on them now are metal paint and a wash.
The guns and chain fists have gotten one side of the weapons painted with black, and next time I will paint the other side, and then I suspect it will be two more sittings with the metal, and I will do the finishing touches after the arms are glued to the torsos.

My first Inquisitor (the one where the arm was impossible to attach) is also comming along. He now have most of the letaher painted, as I found out that what I at first thought was a shirt probably is the front of his leather frock. I will paint these parts as leather too, and then I will paint his armoured chestplate like I have painted the armour on my Tempestus Scions.
I will also find some nice color to put on his pants for the very small places where they are visible.

Found this head in the ogre bitz box, and I think it has the quite fitting look of dedication and anger. 

From this angle, the fit between the arm and hand is a little off. I plan to fix this and make it a little smoother  with some liquid greenstuff.

Another building made

Monday was another productive afternoon. Managed to build a one storey Manufactorum building from the sprues I had from my already opened boxes.
I also made one more ruined corner, like the ones I put out a few pictures of in my last post, with only two ruined wall pieces. And I made one more lamp post.

But that's not all...
I also built three bullgryns, and armed them with battle mauls and suppression shields. They also got the quite scary heads with gas masks. They will be a part of a unit of five, who will serve both as provosts under the direct command of their Commissar, and in regular combat they will be close combat troops.
These miniatures comes in boxes with 3 figures in each box, so the sixth figure will be a bodyguard built as Nork Deaddog. Not sure what his name will be yet, I'll come back to that at a later time.

From my bits box I will build the remaining four troopers of the command squadron for the Abhuman Auxilia. I have some spare torsos and it will look ok for this command squad to look a little different from each other. They have all done something to deserve the posting they are given. Almost like a penal legion.
I haven't worked out all the details yet, but I know I will make some solid fluff for each human in this unit. What I do know is that the commander (captain?) was one of the poorer graduates from his class in Officer training, and he was sent to the Abhuman Auxilia because High Command did not wish to sacrifice human troops to his poor leadership. But he have proved the High Command wrong, and leads his unit well. They don't like to be wrong, so as a punishment they send him offisers that they dislike for one reason or another.
The commissar was sent to the unit because he was badly hurt in a fight with Ogres of another unit, so they sent him there because they were sure he hated Ogres by now, and that one of them would eventually kill him. Instead he found a unit where all the troopers followed his every order. In his time there, no one has been shot for disobeying orders or for cowardise in battle, and everyone obeys his orders without questions. He also have the five bullgryns mentioned earlier to help him stop riots, brawls or other problems in the camps where they serve.

My plan is that the Abhuman Auxilia will have five bullgryns with mauls and suppression shields, nine bullgryns with grenadier gauntlets and slabshields (one of theese will be a Bone'ead), and then I'll see how many I will assemble as ogryns with Ripper guns. I will also add all the ratlings I have (will not buy more unless there are new models being released) and I will use my old metal ogres as planned earlier. They look rather different from the new plastic ones, but after all there are at least seven different races of them (my army will have three of them).

And now for some pictures...

Here is the new Manufactorum building. This time I glued the pipe bend first, and added the two chimney elements after it had dried.

The new corner, exactly like the one I made last time. Thought about adding a plain wall segment to it, but I didn't want to waste a good door element.

No doubt this will look really cool when it is painted up and put on the table.

Had to to the same with a lamp post. This is not the new one from yesterday though.

I just had to give this officer a big chainsword. He is from the tank corps or artillery train, and is ordering his units to roll out.

And here is a pic of the commander of the Abhuman Auxilia, as mantioned above. He was also visible in the background in one of the pics in the last post, but I thought he deserved a better picture.
What I like here is his head. I think it makes him look a bit like a miniature ogre, and you can see battle scars.

...and it actually ended up as a productive weekend after all...

The weekend is now officially over, and I managed to finish my forrest (didn't use all the leaves I thought I would though so I have some left for future woods), I have a Hydra almost complete (still missing 2nd crewman and some paint), and I have two new buildings for my 40K town.

Below is a small description of each new project and some pictures taken on my workbench last night. 

I promise to add much better pictures once everything is painted, as the pics look quite messy with the weird things in the background.

Here are two pictures of my Manufactorum building. This looks pretty much like the building at the back of the Manufactorm box, but there is a modification... The building is one piece longer so it is 3x4 instead of 3x3 (if you count whole panels).
The chimney was a pain in the butt to glue on, so next time I will only glue the bend and add the rest of it when everything is glued solid.

The forrest seen from different angles to try and show the different trees. I might add just a little more leaves on them when I look over them tonight, but if I do it will just be small leaves to hide naked branches.

This is a conversion I think there will be some of in the ruined town. I try to get as many "whole" buildings as I can, and that means that these parts often ends in the bitbox. So why not use them?

This is the frst pic of the Hydra. The black panels on the side will be similar on all Chimera-based chassies, and I will try to think up something similar for the Leman Russ chassies. The rest of the tank will be Administratum Standard Gray. Gunbarrels and tracks and details will get their appropriate colours... In the back by the waterpot you can see the commander of the Abhuman Auxilia, where he commands Ratling, Ogryns and Bullgryns. He will have a command squad consisting of humans, an Ogryn Bodyguard and the unit will have their own commisar.

Here is a look inside the drivers compartment of the Hydra. If you look closely you'll see a little red field by the drivers left arm. That is a tank of some sorts, probably a fuel tank or something. On the platform behind the gunner/driver there will be another crewman, and I am painting him up now.

The second building is a pumping station. I will go over it with greenstuff today and fix some holes that are around the pump units (above the pipes comming in) and some cracks between the roof tiles. 

I really like these streetlights, and want to add as many of them as I possibly can to my city. That means I will build several of these small corners. This weeekend I made two. Both of them have battle damaged floors, and I think most of them will have that, as those tiles are the ones most often being left for the bitbox after assembly of a building.

The second one got a little more battle damage. Looking at these pics now it seems like I really wanted to take a pic of my plastic watercup, but that just happened to be standing there.

Happy new year! Revisiting "old" projects...

For several weeks I have not been able to sit down and do much in the workshop. Life has just been too busy with everything else going on at work and with other hobbies.
But I have managed to do a little bit of painting here and there, and these last few days I have gotten to do a bit.
My Tempestus Scions are slowly comming along, but there are lots of details so it takes a lot of time. The banner is the only thing that is completely finished. I used 7 different colours on it, but only 6 are visible as one was used to give the white the right look.
Then colour number 8 was used on the banner pole.
The Scions themselves will also end up with 8 colours or more, so I apply one colour and while it dries I do another project.

The Chaos Terminators also gets a little paint from time to time, and so far I have one that I can say is about done, while the others still need to get their weapons and some small details painted, but they are comming along even though it goes slow.

One of the old projects mentioned in the title of this blog is my Hydra Flak tank. It was really standing around waiting for a nice day when I could take it outside and prime it black, but I decided not to wait any longer so I painted it by hand instead. That also ment I could go on with the building, and status now is that alle the parts except from the second crew member is assembled. The Hydra itself is about 80% painted, and the only things missing to glue on is the cannons (they are assembled but will need some paint before I add them on, the gunner/driver needs to be fitted, and the second crew member needs to be assembled (but with him it is also a matter of painting some parts before assembly).
I do the Hydra in the scheme I have thought up for chimera based chassies, and that is Adeptus Standard Gray with Abaddon Black details on the side skirts. The ring around the front hatch is Dark Angels Green (or Caliban Green, don't remember what name is the current one), and the hatch itself is black.

Since the first tank I painted got a yellow ring around the turret, I thought it would be nice to give another colour to the artillery pieces in the army.

I think this colour scheme will be used for the tanks as wel from now on, but I will have to see how I can get the black details to fit on their side skirts as they are different from the Chimera based chassies.

The second and much older project that I revisited is the Citadel wood that i started on ages ago. I had only glued the two parts of the trees together, so today I gave the trees some love and care and went over all the cracks with liquid greenstuff and glued all the branches on to the trees.
The idea is to use a lot of leaves, as may as I can fit on to the trees. I have all the leaves from the wood that I used to make my haunted forrest presented in an earlier blog post, so I have plenty of leaves.
So far I haven't started to glue the leaves on, but I plan to start with that after work tomorrow, or at least some time during the weekend.

As usual, pictures will follow when I have actually finished something...